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PATHOLOGICAL 

ASPECTS OF 

RELIGIONS 



BY 

JOSIAH MOSES, Ph. D. 

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Clark University, 
Worcester, Mass., in partial fulfilment of the requirements 
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, and accepted on 
the recommendation of G. Stanley Hall 



©lark Itttttf rsitij preae 

WORCESTER, MASS. 
1906 



SEP 17 



v 5 ^ 



" Take for God's truth that which harmonizes with 
all the best you know and helps and strengthens you 
in nobility of life." 

Tennyson. 



" Error and evil are located in deficiency or excess. 
Even excess in virtue is evil, an excess of humility be- 
ing abjectness; of courage, rashness ; of prudence, 
corwardice ; of patience, indifference ; of economy, 
parsimony ; of generosity, waste ; of deference, obse- 
quiousness. And so also an excess of learning is ped- 
antry ; of ease, indolence ; of comfort, self-indulgence ; 
of zeal, fanaticism. Right and justice are found in 
moderation, in the golden mean — in the true balance — 
between overdoing and underdoing, going too fast and 
too slow." 

Orlando J. Smith, 
Balance The Fundamental Verity, p. 43. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Pages. 

Introductory Note by President G.. Stanley Hall, . . vii 

Preface, 1 

CHAPTER I. 

Definitions of Religion Classified. 

Author's definition, 12 

Meaning of pathological religion, 12 

Criterion for determining what religion is pathological, . . 14 

CHAPTER II. 

The Emotional Element in Religion. 

The role love plays in religion, 15 

Love an efflorescence of the sexual impulse, .... 15 

Examples of the influence of sex on religion, .... 16 

Brinton and others on the relationship between sex and religion, 18 

President Hall's parallelisms between love and religion, . . 20 

Phallicism, its origin, 22 

Pathological degenerations of phallicism, . , ... 25 

Renunciation and Restraint, its motives, . . . . . 30 

Hate and anger, their roles in the religious life, . . . . 33 

Thugism, 35 

Religious suicides, 38 

Pity, its role in the religious life, 38 

The true pedagogy of pity, 40 

The Jains and Doukhobors, 41 

Fear, an important element in the religious experience, . . 42 

President Hall's study of various fears, 43 

Morbid fears, 45 

The Great Awakening, . 47 

The Kentucky Revival, 51 

Jumpers, 55 

The Conversion of Children, 56 

Human Sacrifices, 59 

Generalizations, 65 



iv Table of Contents. 

Pages. 
CHAPTER III. 

Mysticism. 

Definitions, 69 

Mystics criticised, 71 

Critics criticised, 72 

Mysticism found in all religions, ....... 73 

Brahmanism, 74 

Sufism, 76 

Christian Mysticism, 80 

Mysticism among primitive peoples, 123 

Analysis of mysticism, 125 

CHAPTER IV. 

Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 

Origin, meaning, and importance of symbolism, . . . 130 

Degeneration of symbolism, 132 

Sacred relics, . 132 

Fetichism, . 134 

Buddhist Praising Wheels, 136 

Water and fire baptismal rites, 138 

James on ritual worship, 138 

Carlyle on pathological symbolism, 139 

Symbolism in the Russian Church, 140 

Total absence of symbolism is bad, 140 

Interpretation and Bibliolatry among the Jews, .... 141 

Extracts from the Talmud, 142 

The Qabala, 160 

Christianity owes its birth to degeneration of Judaism, . . 168 

Christian bibliolatry and interpretation, 169 

CHAPTER V. 

The Intellectual Element in Religion. 

Religion not wholly a matter of the intellect, .... 174 

The meaning of belief, 175 

Normal and abnormal beliefs differentiated, .... 176 

Beliefs concerning disease, 177 

Diseases ascribed to demons, 178 

The Church's methods of curing diseases, . . . . . 179 

The Church's hostility to medicine, 180 

The Church's medical science, doctrine of signatures, relics, 

charms, etc., 181 

The Church's hostility to Jewish physicians, .... 183 

Early Protestant beliefs concerning disease, .... 184 



Table of Contents. 



Warfare waged against inoculation, vaccination, and use of 
anaesthetics, ...... 

Persecution of Jews during pestilences, 
History of beliefs in miracle cures, 
Christian Science and kindred sects, 
Normal and abnormal doubt differentiated, . 
Four types of doubters, ..... 

Renan's and James's 'Will to Belive,' 
Work, a cure for doubt, .... 

Doubting, an adolescent phenomenon, 
Evils of bad religious training, 

Scientism and apathy, 

Attitude of atheist, scientist, and apathist toward religion 



Pages. 

185 
187 
188 
189 
193 
194 
201 
203 
204 
205 
207 
208 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Volitional Element in Religion. 

The r61e that will plays in the religious experience, . . . 213 

Fanaticism analyzed and described, 215 

Value of uniformity in religious observances, .... 221 

John Calvin, his character and work, 222 

Church organizations, their origin and development, . . . 226 

Distinction between individual and institutional religions, 227 

Importance of institutional religion, 231 

Asceticism and monasticism, . . . . . . . 233 

Four types of 'other-worldists,' 234 

Active and passive asceticism, 235 

Origins of asceticism, and resultant attitudes towards life, . 238 

Selfishness and inhumanity of ascetics, 241 

Sketch of St. Macarius of Alexandria, 245 

Sketch of St. Simeon of Stylites, 246 

Sketch of St. Theodosius, 247 

Sketch of St. Stephen of Crandmont, . . . . . . 248 

Sketch of St. Peter Damiani, .249 

The Flagellants, 253 

False ascetics, 255 

Monasteries become hotbeds of vice, 256 

Only abnormal religious experiences have been catalogued and 

studied, 259 

Index, 261 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

With this memoir Clark University begins the publication 
of monograph supplements to its most recently established 
Journal. 

This thesis of Dr. Moses marks one of the very earliest 
attempts to treat of the abnormal side of religious life. 
While it is generally admitted that religious experience may 
become pathological, no one has attempted before to trace 
perversions, excesses and aberrations over so wide a field. 
Hence, this treatise merits special leniency on the part of 
the reader, which pioneer work can always justly claim, It 
is often hard to draw a clear line of demarkation between 
the normal and the abnormal, and in doing this no doubt 
individual judgments would differ. None of the topics are 
treated exhaustively, but the effort throughout has been to 
do suggestive work with the conviction that this domain is 
almost sure to be far more cultivated later. The writer has 
spent much time for three years upon his theme, has writ- 
ten and rewritten nearly every page and believes that were 
he to continue his work for a decade or two his conclusions 
would continue to undergo transformation. 

It is a very important lesson for our times and one that 
should impress itself upon every one interested in the phe- 
nomena of religious life that it is not exempt from disease 
any more than is every tissue and organ of the body. It 
hardly need be added that what is herein contained involves 
no disparagement of true religion and ought to be heartily 
welcomed by every one who desires to see it kept pure and 
undefiled. 

Finally, it should not be forgotten that wide as is the 
field here covered, there are many other topics that might 
very properly be included under its title that are not here 
touched upon. 

G. Stanley Hall. 
Clark University, 

September, 1906. 



PREFACE 



Pathological aspects of religions ! The very title is suffi- 
cient to produce a variety of reactions in the different individ- 
uals who will read or hear it, and, as in the case of so many 
other titles and phrases, we may expect it soon to be roundly 
abused by all parties. Those atheistically inclined will per- 
haps hail it with delight, and apply it indiscriminately to 
everything in all religions ; the religious will recoil from it, 
but those who belong to no sect or party, and who are there- 
fore unprejudiced, will draw no hasty conclusions, but will 
calmly seek for its true scope and meaning, and, we hope, be 
rewarded in some measure for their pains. Certainly the 
last is the only proper attitude to assume in the study of this 
subject, as it is in all others. 

The mine, here opened up with crude implements, is not 
altogether a new one. At least two other pioneers have dug 
in it and brought forth much valuable ore. One of these was 
M. Ernest Murisier, a young French savant whose early death 
was a great loss to the scientific world. His work 1 is a little 
masterpiece of psychological analysis, but its scope is limited 
to three chapters: Mysticism, Fanaticism, and Emotional 
Contagion. The other is Prof. Wm. James, whose more 
ambitious production 2 is already familiar to every one. The 
value of his labor is unfortunately minimized because he con- 
sidered all his curious specimens pure ore and failed to see 
that the majority of them contained much dross and but little 
of the pure metal. Had he named his work l 'Varieties of 
Abnormal Religious Experience," and studied his materials 
from that point of view, it would have been undoubtedly the 
best so far produced on the subject. As it is, the work is 
confusing, distorted and objectionable to a large class of readers 
who prefer to consider many if not most of the experiences 
he has collected and analyzed distinctly pathological rather 
than mere exaggerations of normal religious experiences. 

1 Les Maladies du Sentiment Religieux, Paris, 1901. 

2 Varieties of Religious Experience. 



2 Preface. 

There is an important difference between disease and excessive 
strength or weakness. 

Besides these two there have been many alienists who have 
noted religious aberrations of various sorts among their pa- 
tients, and anthropologists who have carefully described 
scattered cases of pathological religious beliefs, rites, cere- 
monies, customs, etc., among primitive, ancient, and modern 
peoples, but no attempt has been made to collect, analyze, 
and classify these cases psychologically. 

The present study modestly undertakes to do this. Its 
author has drawn all his materials, and many of his explana- 
tions from the works of alienists, anthropologists, mission- 
aries, historians, and biographers ; has studied these as im- 
partially and classified them as best he could. He makes no 
claim to originality, except perhaps in method of treatment, 
and is conscious of its very many lacunas and deficiencies. 
He has only sorted the crude ore, leaving to more expert 
hands to do the smelting and refining. 

The work is intended to parallel and complement in some 
measure the labors of Leuba, Starbuck, Coe, and others who 
have done so much to tell us the true psychological meaning 
of many of the normal religious experiences. For while 
dealing altogether with pathological religious experiences it 
throws considerable light indirectly upon those normal ex- 
periences of which they are the degenerations, and furnishes 
us a better and more complete picture of the birth, develop- 
ment, and decay of religion in the race and in the individual 
than the former could alone. It is also hoped that this 
study will be of service to religious pedagogues, in that it 
endeavors to mark with buoys the hidden rocks and reefs on 
which so many religious ships in the past have foundered. 

In no department of education are the need and impor- 
tance of sound pedagogical principles so great as in religion, 
for no other has a subject which touches deeply so many 
sides and interests of human life. Religion is perhaps the 
oldest product of human feeling and thought, so old at any 
rate that many consider it one of the fundamental instincts. 
Its influence on the evolution of the race and on the life of 
the individual is simply incalculable, and therefore any error 
made in the inculcation of its principles is fraught with un- 
told consequences. One poorly trained in mathematics, 
physics, languages, etc., is not nearly so dangerous a mem- 
ber of society as one poorly trained in religion, for the former 



Preface. 3 

are recent, accessory acquirements which do not begin to 
shape the character and conduct of the individual to the de- 
gree and extent that the latter does. A study of this sort 
should therefore be full of suggestions to those to whom the 
religious training of the young is intrusted. Its aim through- 
out is not to destroy but to fulfill, and the thought so well 
expressed by Dean Farrar has been constantly in the mind of 
its author : " We study the past not to denounce it, not to 
set ourselves above it, not to dissever ourselves from its con- 
tinuity, but to learn from it, and to avoid its failures. It 
has much to teach us by way of solemn warning. If we 
shall have to dwell upon its mistakes it is only that we may 
have grace to avoid them, and to be on our guard against 
similar tendencies . " 1 

It is the opinion of the writer that the future will not be 
non-religious, as an ever-increasing number of scholars pre- 
dict it will, but will possess a religion which will appropriate 
and assimilate the good of all the religions of the past and 
present, and will harmonize with its stage of development 
and satisfy the peculiar needs which only a religion of some 
sort can satisfy. It is already a platitude that each age has 
the religion which it deserves, but during transition periods it 
happens that progress is made along some lines much more 
rapidly than along others, and the difficulty of making proper 
adjustments is so great that impatient spirits grow restless 
and strive to force the adjustment even if they have to elim- 
inate one or two important factors entirely. If old religion 
and the new science cannot immediately come to terms the 
enthusiastic but short-sighted partisans of the latter are ready 
to sacrifice the former, while the religious enthusiasts are 
equally eager to disparage and even annihilate all science. 
Fortunately, these individuals are few and their power rela- 
tively small. The race moves slowly and cautiously, regard- 
less of the goading of the few, and instinctively refuses to 
lose anything that may be of value to it. 

That of all things it will not leave Religion, the grandest 
legacy of the ages, behind, no one who is conversant with 
Volk-psychology and the trend of the present age will deny. 
Science is already halting in its mad and disappointing rush, 
and beginning to suspect that the promised land it was so 
eagerly « ' making for ' ' is but a mirage or the phantom of an 
overwrought brain. Philosophy is bending all her energies 

1 Hist, of Interpretation, p. 14. 



4 Preface. 

to reconcile Science and Religion, knowing that the alliance 
will be extremely beneficial to both, in that it will save them 
from pessimism, despair, and deterioration. 

Clifford's Cosmic Consciousness, the Panpsychism of 
Fechner, Stout, Strong, and others, the Pure Experiences of 
James, the new Humanism of Schiller, and the Pragmatism 
of the Chicago School, are all efforts, I take it, to bring 
about this reconciliation ; that is, they are tendencies away 
from materialism and the crude conception of law which were 
the offspring of an immature science toward a new idealism 
which is always the closest ally of religion. 

It is, perhaps, another instance of the irony of fate that 
Science should wittingly or unwittingly become Religion's 
greatest benefactor. She has pruned the religious tree of all 
its dead and superfluous twigs and branches, has cleaned it 
of its many deathly parasites, so that now it is much more 
beautiful and healthy than it ever was, and the future may 
well hope to enjoy fruits, richer and more luscious than were 
ever possessed by the past. 

I gladly take this opportunity to acknowledge my very 
great indebtedness to President G. Stanley Hall, who first sug- 
gested the subject to me, and without whose continued help, 
encouragement, and inspiration, this study, crude and im- 
perfect as it is, could not have been completed. 

J. M. 

Wokcestek, Mass., July, 1905. 



CHAPTER I. 
Definitions of Religion. 

It is evident that just as in medicine, psychiatry, art and 
ethics, we must know physical and mental health, beauty, 
and goodness, in order to clearly understand disease, ugli- 
ness, and evil ; so too, in religion, a knowledge of its healthy 
normal condition, is a prerequisite to a knowledge of its ab- 
normal, pathological condition. The one is as important as 
the other, and both must be kept constantly in countenance 
of each other, in order that each may shed light upon the 
other. In order, therefore, to determine what pathological 
religion is we must first determine what normal religion is. 

What is religion ? The history of the attempts that have 
been made to answer this question forms a long and tedious 
chapter in the history of human thought. Almost every 
writer on the subject, from the earliest times down to the 
present, has offered a different definition, no one being quite 
content with those offered by the others. The old adage, 
" Quot homines tot sententise " holds nowhere more true 
than here. A collection and classification of some of these 
definitions may not be without interest. 

1. A great many writers, both ancient and modern, have, 
as Prof. Brinton points out, 1 looked upon the religious state, 
'inse' as pathological, "a symptom of a diseased brain." 
Thus, Empedocles in the fifth century B. C, declared it to 
be "a sickness of the mind, ' ' and Feuerbach, about fifty 
years ago, stigmatized it as "the most pernicious malady of 
humanity." Prof. Sergi, in his recent book, L'Origine dei 
Fenomeni Psichici, 2 says point blank that all religions, the 
highest as well as the lowest, are pathological. They all 
spring from desire for protection against evils, present and 
future, and inasmuch as the protection is foolishly sought 
from supernatural, and therefore unnatural sources which 
never existed, the desire cannot be satisfied, and therefore, 
all forms of prayer, worship, sacrifices, in short, all religious 

1 Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 41 ff. 2 Ch. 15, pp. 264-298. 



6 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

beliefs and practices are a waste of time, productive of fatal- 
ism, and harmful to progress. Religion, he hopes, will in 
the future be supplanted by science, which will offer natural 
explanations of the causes of all the ills to which humanity 
is subject, and furnish natural remedies for them. 

2. A similar view, quite prevalent in all ages, is that re- 
ligion is superstition. Hobbes defines it somewhere as 
' ' superstition sanctioned by the State ' ' and tells us that it 
was born of fear and ignorance. Lucretius declared it was 
born of a dream, while Guyau and other contemporaries tell 
us that it is at best only a product of the childhood of the 
race, which we will soon outgrow. 

3. A third view is that religion is a fraud invented by 
priests and rulers to frighten the masses into subjection. 
This was a favorite view about the time of the French Revo- 
lution. In England, Shelley championed this view and de- 
clared it to be one of his missions ' ' to unveil the religious 
frauds by which nations have been deluded into submission." 
These three groups of theories and definitions may be charac- 
terized as antagonistic definitions ; definitions not of religion, 
but against religion. They are the favorites of atheists. 

4. Still another view holds that at some far-distant time 
the Creator revealed himself to our forebears thereby causing 
Religion to be born full-grown in their souls. Present re- 
ligions are mere reminiscences and degenerations of that per- 
fect religion which was the parent of them all. Religion has 
not, like language, art, science, government, etc., developed 
according to the laws of evolution ; her's was a Minerva-like 
birth. 

Closely akin to this view is that which holds that religion 
is an expression of the ' inner light ' that ' light which light- 
eth every man who cometh into the world ' disclosing unto 
him the existence of God and the fact of his soul. " When 
I say that all religions depend for their origin and continu- 
ance directly upon inspiration," writes Dr. Brinton, " I state 
an historic fact. It may be known under other names, of 
credit or discredit, as mysticism, ecstasy, rhapsody, demoniac 
possession, the divine afflatus, the gnosis, or in its latest 
christening, 'cosmic consciousness. ' All are but expressions 
of a belief that knowledge arises, words are uttered or actions 
performed not through conscious ideation or reflective purpose 
but through the promptings of a power above or beyond the 
individual mind. " 1 It is interesting to note in passing, Dr. 
1 Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 52 ff. 



Definitions of Religion. 7 

Brinton 's earlier view of the matter. « < Religions, ' ' this 
author tells us in another work, "are the unaided attempts 
of man to find out God ; they are the efforts of the reason 
struggling to define the infinite ; they are the expressions of 
that ' ' yearning after the gods ' ' which the earliest of poets 
discerned in the hearts of all men. " 1 

Again, there are the views of narrow-minded sectarians 
who hold that the only religion worthy of the name is their 
own ; all others are base superstitions and idolatries. This 
view has received its best expression in Milton's Paradise 
Lost, and is not uncommon even to-day. 

Prof. Leuba, in one of his excellent articles, 2 has collected 
a number of scientific and philosophical definitions, and clas- 
sified them into three groups as follows : 

In the first group, which may be called the Noetic group, 
" a specific intellectual element is given as the essence, or as 
the distinguishing mark of religion." 

Thus, Martineau defines religion as, "a belief in an Ever- 
living God, that is, in a Divine mind and will ruling the 
universe and holding moral relations with mankind." 

Romanes : ' ' Religion is a department of thought having 
for its objects a self-conscious and intelligent Being. ' ' 

d'Alviella: Religion is, "The belief in the existence of 
superhuman beings who interfere in a mysterious fashion in 
the destiny of man. ' ' 

Hegel: Religion is, "The knowledge possessed by the 
finite mind of its nature as absolute mind. " 

In the second, or Feeling and ^Esthetic group, " it is one 
or several specific feelings which are singled out as the re- 
ligious differentiae. ' ' 

Schleiermacher : "Religion cannot and will not originate 
in the pure impulse to know. It is neither thinking nor act- 
ing, but intuition and feeling." Later he wrote: "Re- 
ligion is a feeling of absolute dependence. " 

Herbart : « ' Sympathy with the universal dependence of 
men is the essential natural principle of all religion.' ' 

Goethe, in Faust : 

11 Venn's Gliick! Herz! Liebe! Gott! 

Ich habe keinen Namen 
Dafiir, Gefiihl ist alles." 

x The Myths of the Kew World, p. 15. 

2 Intro, to a Psychological Study of Religion, Monist, Jan., 1901. The 
reader will find here a good collection and criticism of definitions. 



8 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

Sabatier : ' ' That which we call religion in a man is the 
sentiment of the relation in which he stands and wants to 
stand to the universal principle upon which he knows himself 
to be dependent, and to the universe itself of which he finds 
himself a part. "... A filial feeling towards God and a fra- 
ternal feeling towards man is what makes the Christian." 

Upton : " It is the felt relationship in which the finite self- 
consciousness stands to the immanent and universal ground 
of all being, which constitutes religion." 

In the third, or Volitional and Ethical group, * « the active 
principle, the cravings, the desires, the impulses, the will, 
take the place occupied by the intellect or the feelings in the 
other classes." 

Bradley : * « Religion is the attempt to express the com- 
plete reality of goodness through every aspect of our being." 

Feuerbach : ' ' The origin, nay, the essence of religion is 
desire ; if man possessed no needs, no desires, he would pos- 
sess no gods. " 

Marshall : « ' The restraint of individualistic impulses to 
racial ones (the suppression of our will to a higher will) seems 
to me to be of the very essence of religion ; the belief in the 
Deity, as usually found, being from the psychological point 
of view an attachment to, rather than the essence of, the re- 
ligious feeling. ' ' 

The Golden Rule, found in so many of the ancient religions 
may be cited here as emphasizing this element to the exclu- 
sion almost, of all the others. When a Gentile came to 
Rabbi Hillel with the challenge, "Proselytize me, but on 
condition that thou teach me the whole law whilst I stand 
upon one leg, ' ' the latter converted him by replying, ' ' That 
which is hateful to thyself, do not do to thy neighbor. This 
is the whole law, all the rest is its commentary. ? ' Similarly, 
the Apostle James : '« What doth it profit though a man say 
he hath faith, and have not works ? Can faith save him ? ' ' 
Right willing and acting, rather than mere believing, is for 
him the essence of religion. 

That these definitions are all more or less one-sided, need 
hardly be pointed out. Each one as we should expect, finds 
in religion that which is predominant in his own soul. 
Goethe could not have possibly been true to himself and said 
anything else than, ' ' Name it what you will, for me it is all 
feeling. " Spencer, Romanes, and other investigators were, 
by their natures, compelled to define it in terms of the intel- 



Definitions of Religion. 9 

lect, and likewise the men of action like James and Bondaref 
were compelled to define it in terms of will and conduct. 
Such definitions are valuable more for the light they shed on 
individual psychology, than for their aid in the solution of 
the question * What is religion ? ' The other writers whom 
we have quoted, deluded by the fatal faculty-psychology, 
endeavored, either by analyzing and comparing the different 
historical religions, to arrive at the origin, the seed from 
which they all sprang, or, by eliminating all that is charac- 
teristic of the different species to discover the one quality or 
essence common to all ; a 4 summum genus ' from which, as 
a starting point, they might construct a religious tree a la 
Haeckel. 

All the various theories concerning the origin of religion 
are nothing more than mere idle guesses in the dark. Its 
roots lie so deeply and intricately imbedded and enmeshed in 
the past of the race that it has now become almost an in- 
stinct, which, in its proper time, and under normal conditions, 
sprouts forth spontaneously from the dark and impenetrable 
regions of the individual's sub-consciousness. To say that 
religion was born of the emotions, or the intellect, or the 
will is to arbitrarily partition the soul into three air-tight 
compartments, a procedure which flagrantly violates the truth 
and for which there is absolutely no justification. The soul 
is an organic unity of inseparable parts, which develop, 
ripen, and decay concomitantly and covariantly. When in 
its gradual evolution it finally reached the mature chrysalis 
state and was beginning to emerge into a beautiful butterfly, 
i. e., when our simian ancestors were becoming more human 
than ape, then many wonderful changes must have taken 
place and new conditions pregnant with future possibilities 
were born. It was then that the veil was lifted from the 
eyes of our ancestors ; they beheld the wonders and mysteries 
of the starry heavens, and the forces of nature playing about 
them ; they caught a glimpse of God, were filled with won- 
der, admiration, awe, curiosity, and fear ; the bud unfolded 
itself, and the beautiful flower, religion, was born in the 
world. This, figurative and fanciful as it is, is probably the 
most that can be said concerning its birth. The Dutch 
botanist, Hugo de Vries, maintains that new types can arise 
suddenly. Great variations, not small, as Darwin thought, 
are, according to him, the condition of evolution through the 
struggle for life. If religion be the product of some such 



10 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

sudden mental variation, the futility of trying to trace it back 
to an instinct, or feeling, or will-act, would be all the more 
manifest. 

Of the essence of religion we can likewise make no dog- 
matic statement. There are no two religions, we venture to 
say, whose essences are precisely the same. Indeed, we may 
go even further and say that as many men, so many religions. 
We should more accurately speak of religions than of religion 
which exists only as an abstract term or idea. The attempt 
to reduce all religions to one common denominator is as futile 
as that of the ancient School of Miletus, to find in water, the 
infinite atmosphere, breath, the first and fundamental prin- 
ciple of the whole universe. 

Instead of vainly endeavoring to discover the origin or es- 
sence of religion, several recent writers have wisely under- 
taken to ascertain the psychological meaning and value of 
the religions which the different peoples, primitive, barbarous, 
and civilized, now possess and the influence they exert upon 
their lives. Here we may mention among others, the follow- 
ing definitions : 

Eliza Ritchie: "When we speak of a religious man or 
race, we have in view a certain temper of mind, a certain way 
of conceiving the facts of existence, a doctrine of some sort. 
But we also know that a doctrine itself, however elaborate it 
may be, does not constitute a religion. When the doctrine 
affects the tone and color of the individual's emotional life, 
and has a determining influence upon his conduct, then the 
individual may be said to be religious. Whether the creed 
be low or lofty, simple or complex, it must be felt; whether 
its outer expression consist in ceremony or ritual, moral pre- 
cepts or ethical principles, philanthropic work or fanatical 
persecutions, some effect it must have on the emotional and 
practical life ; if either of these factors be wholly absent, the 
phenomenon is not that of religion. ' ' 1 

Pfleiderer : ' * In the religious consciousness all sides of the 
whole personality participate. Of course we must recognize 
that knowing and willing are here, not ends in themselves, 
as in science and morality, but rather suboidinated to feeling 
as the real centre of religious consciousness. This is not 
simply a feeling, but a combination of feelings of freedom 
and dependence. ' ' 

!The Essentials of Religion, Phil. Rev., Jan., 1901. 



Definitions of Religion. 11 

Caird : ' i Without as yet attempting to define religion, we 
may go as far as to say that a man 's religion is the expression 
of his ultimate attitude to the Universe, the summed-up 
meaning and purport of his whole consciousness of things. " 

Tolstoi: "True religion is a relation, accordant with 
reason and knowledge, which man establishes with the in- 
finite life surrounding him, and it is such as binds his life to 
that infinity, and guides his conduct. ' ' 1 

James: "Religion means, for the purpose of these lec- 
tures, the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men 
in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand 
in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." 2 

The phrase, "in their solitude," limits the definition to 
the passive, subjective type of individuals, such as the mys- 
tics, monastics, and ascetics, and eliminates that much larger 
class of individuals in whom the religious fervor is at its 
highest pitch only when they are in a group or crowd, when 
they are laboring for their unfortunate fellow-beings, for the 
general welfare of the race; or, if fanatics, when they are 
warring against heretics and the enemies of their God. 

As definitions, it is not difficult to raise objections against 
each of the above, but the point which they emphasize, 
namely, that religion is an experience which is the combined 
effect of all the activities of the psyche, — beliefs, emotional 
responses, and volitional acts of various kinds, — and which 
shapes in large measure the lives and conduct of men, evinces 
a deeper and broader knowledge of the true nature of religion 
and its relation to life than any of the previous ones. 

Owing to its fullness, comprehensiveness, and extreme 
complexity, we shall never, perhaps, have a perfectly adequate 
and satisfactory definition of religion, and it is doubtful 
whether such a definition is at all necessary. A summation 
of all the definitions that have ever been offered, and those 
that will be offered in the future, would approach nearer the 
truth than any particular one, for as has already been stated, 
religion is not an abstract something which exists somewhere 
in the realm of space, but is a concrete experience which 
every individual has in a greater or less degree, and in no 
two are they precisely the same. 

1 Essays and Letters, p. 295. 

2 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 31. 



12 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

It should be plain, therefore, that the following is not of- 
fered as a standard definition of religion, but as the writer 's 
attempt to state as briefly and concisely as possible his own 
conception of the meaning of the term in the hope that it 
will better enable the reader to follow him and understand 
his view-point and conclusions. 

Religion is a whole-souled or rather a psycho-physical re- 
action to one or more preternatural objects or beings, or to 
ideals which are believed to be somehow constantly and seri- 
ously related to the individual and the race. We employ 
the term preternatural rather than supernatural because the 
latter does not accurately describe the conceptions and beliefs 
of primitive and barbarous peoples concerning their gods and 
idols. They were not exactly natural, nor yet, properly 
speaking, supernatural. They were something other than 
natural, as nature was then understood, i. e., preternatural. 

Now that we have stated as best we can what we mean by 
normal religion, we can more readily explain what we mean 
by pathological religion. In an off-hand fashion, it may be 
said, that religious experience which is not a well-rounded, 
well-balanced reaction of the whole soul is pathological, but 
in saying this it must be remembered that not all people react 
with the same fullness of force, nor in the same way. There 
are all stages of religious development in the individual as 
well as in the race, and the reaction which is normal to one 
stage of development is different from that which is normal 
to another. Indeed, what is normal for one may be patho- 
logical for the other. We cannot, therefore, have a hard 
and fixed standard of measurement for all religions, but must 
employ a different standard for each religion. The child and 
savage cannot be expected to have as lofty and abstract re- 
ligious conceptions as have the Buddhists, for example, or 
the modern Christians, but they are justly expected to have 
the religious conceptions and experiences which are normal 
to their stage of development ; anything short of that is an 
evidence of arrested development or degeneration. In the 
field of morals we are told that the individual should act in 
accordance with the idea of his kind or his type, 1 and the 
same rule applies to religion as well. In judging, therefore, 
of an individual's or race's religious normality, we must com- 
pare them not with individuals belonging to another race, 

^ee Alexander: Moral Order and Progress, p. 236 ; Leslie Stephen, 
Science of Ethics, p. 397. 



Definitions of Religion. 13 

but with those of their own, with their ancestors and neigh- 
bors who grew up with them in the same environment and 
under similar conditions. And within this compass we shall 
meet with all degrees of growth and decay; i. e., among 
Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, etc., there are 
sects and denominations who hold religious views and per- 
form religious rites which are abnormal to the stage of de- 
velopment of their respective religions. 

Unfortunately, however, our knowledge of the life-history 
of the different tribes and races, especially the primitive ones; 
the conditions of their social, intellectual, and natural en- 
vironments, is in many cases too fragmentary and uncertain 
to enable us to determine whether their religious development 
has kept pace with their moral, social, and intellectual de- 
velopment, or whether it has been arrested, or degenerated. 
Of the religions of certain peoples who are our neighbors and 
contemporaries, such for instaace, as the Holy Orthodox 
Greek Church of Russia, with its numerous sects and fifteen 
millions of schismatics, and in our own country the Christian 
Catholic Church, or Dowieism, Christian Scientists, the 
Society of the Holy Ghost and Us, and many others, there is 
certain and almost complete knowledge, and therefore, we 
have no hesitancy in stigmatizing them as more or less patho- 
logical. Of the religions of many primitive peoples, however, 
we can make no such definite statement. It is difficult to 
understand the people and get into sympathetic rapport with 
their religions, and besides our knowledge of them is largely 
derived from the reports of tourists and missionaries, whose 
observations were unscientific, to say the least. There is 
one criterion, however, of which we are sure, namely, the 
effects of the religions upon their adherents. Religion, like 
government, is of, for, and by the people, and like govern- 
ment, it is of positive value only when it serves the needs of 
the people, makes life more moral and joyful, and aids them 
in their normal development. But just as there are auto- 
cratic and tyrannical forms of government which militate 
against the mental and material welfare and progress of their 
subjects, so too, are there religions, which, instead of being 
subservient to their votaries, have terrorized and enslaved 
them, inoculated them with the virus of pessimism, made 
death a boon, and hindered their normal development in 
countless different ways. Such religions cannot but be con- 
sidered pathological. 



14 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

" Insanity, ' ' writes E. Stanley Abbot, " is a morbid con- 
dition of the mind which renders it impossible for the con- 
scious individual to think, feel, or act, in relation to his en- 
vironment, in accordance with the standards of his bringing up," l 
and Dr. Brinton, speaking of racial insanity, says : "A patho- 
logical condition of the ethnic mind is present when it is 
chronically incapable of directing the activities of the group 
correctly toward self-preservation and development. ' ' 2 Bas- 
ing our criterion on these facts we shall hold that whenever 
the religious experiences or practices injure the psychical or 
physical condition of the individual or group, or retard their 
growth so that they cannot think, act, or feel in relation to 
their environments, in accordance with the standards normal 
to their stages of development, they are positively pathological. 

With this criterion constantly in mind, and remembering 
that the religious state is a combined effect of many, if not all 
psychic experiences and activities, and not a compound com- 
posed of separable units, we shall analyze some of the reli- 
gions of primitive, ancient, mediae val, and modern peoples 
into their emotional, intellectual, and volitional elements, for 
the same reason that psychologists analyze consciousness into 
sensation, perception, conception, memory, -imagination, emo- 
tion, will, reasoning, association, etc., and endeavor to show 
that an excessive exaggeration or elimination of any one of 
the elements produces a disharmonious relationship between 
them, so to speak, and leads to degeneration of the whole 
state. 

1 Am. Jour. Insanity, July, 1902. 

2 The Basis of Social Relations, p. 84. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Emotional Element in Religion. 
LOVE. 

That love plays a large and most important role in the re- 
ligious experiences of men, will readily be admitted by every 
one, but that love itself is an irradiation, an efflorescence of 
the sexual impulse which is as old as life and is the very 
foundation of life, some few, perhaps, will be inclined to 
doubt. Biologists, anthropologists, and alienists, however, 
are unanimous on this point, and philology renders the same 
verdict. The English word, ' love, ' the German, * lieben, ' 
the Danish, « lieven, ' Russian, ' lioblyu, 7 and Latin, * lubeo, ' 
are all derived from the Sanscrit root word, « loab, 7 which 
means desire, lust, passion. And the same is true of the 
Hebrew word for love. That the instinct which attracts the 
sexes for the purpose of re-creation is the root from which all 
love has grown is an established fact of science, and now that 
we understand better and more truly the meaning of evolution, 
of sexual selection and reproduction in the plant and animal 
series, we realize the absurdity of being ashamed of the par- 
entage of our noblest emotion. 

This fact is of special interest to us because of the light it 
throws on the dynamic relationship between religion and sex 
which appears so frequently in the insane, and in the biog- 
raphies and autobiographies of Saints, both male and female, 
of monks and nuns, and religious enthusiasts in general. 
Here we find that religion and sex are inextricably inter- 
woven, so to speak, and influence each other at eveiy turn. 
Sexual disturbances irradiate and produce marked religious 
disturbances such as erotic religious trances, visions, halluci- 
nations, mystic experiences, etc., and religious disturbances 
such as take place at excited revivals and religious gather- 
ings, frequently give rise to sexual excesses of the most re- 
volting nature. Unable to express itself naturally, the sexual 
impulse finds an outlet in a more or less sensuous love of 
God, Christ, or the Virgin Mary ; and likewise the religious 



16 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

impulse when overwrought, breaks through its natural bounds 
and spends itself in sexual orgies. In the religious ceremo- 
nies of the Christs, for example, a peculiar mystical sect in 
Russia, after the performance of a series of hysterical acts, 
such as rapid whirling around on their heels, loud singing 
and stamping, wild and uncontrolled laughing, yelling, con- 
tortioning, mutual flagellation, tearing off their clothes, run- 
ning wildly, throwing themselves on the ground, walking on 
all fours, sitting on each others' backs, etc., which continue 
late in the night, they throw themselves pell mell, men and 
women, on beds, benches, on the ground, and abandon them- 
selves to indescribable forms of depravity. " The carnal love 
which we experience for our sisters, " they say, in justifica- 
tion of their licentiousness, "is sanctified by the presence of 
the Holy Spirit among us. " Even more degrading are the 
closing scenes of the ceremonies of another kindred Russian 
sect, the Skoptsy. 1 Similar phenomena obtained in the festi- 
val of Venus, the Bacchanalia, Florolia, Saturnalia, Liberalia, 
and others, not only of the early Greeks and Romans, but 
also of the European nations until almost recent times. 

Of the influence of sex on religion there are also very many 
examples. Mme. Guyon, whose married life was loveless and 
most unhappy, cried, " I wish the Divine love, the love which 
chills the soul with ineffable shivers, the love which puts 
me in a swoon." And later, when she had experienced 
the mystic union with God, she wrote, " O ! my God, if you 
should make the most sensual persons feel what I feel, they 
would soon leave their false pleasures to enjoy one so true. ' ' 
Another mystic, Ruysbroeck, sought and found in God an 
enjoyment, ' 4 more voluptuous for the body and soul than all 
other earthly pleasures. ' ' Numerous other erotic mystics, 
especially the female ones, such as St. Teresa, Catherine of 
Sienna, and St. Gertrude, who experienced mystical "mar- 
riages with God," express themselves in similar strains. 
Of the first, James says, " In the main, her idea of religion 
seems to have been that of an endless amatory flirtation — if 
one may say so without irreverence — between the devotee and 
the Deity. " 2 And of the last we read, that one day, " Suf- 
fering from a headache, she sought, for the glory of God, to 
relieve herself by holding certain odoriferous substances in 
her mouth, when the Lord appeared to her to lean over 

^ee N. Tsakni: La Russie Sectaire, pp. 63-97. Paris, 1888. 
James: Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 347. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion, 17 

towards her lovingly, and to find comfort Himself in these 
odors. After having gently breathed them in, He arose, and 
said with a gratified air to the Saints, as if contented with 
what He had done : 'See the new present which my be- 
trothed has given Me!' 

"One day, at chapel, she heard supernaturally sung, the 
words, i Sanetus, Sanetus, Sanetus, ' The Son of God lean- 
ing towards her like a sweet lover, and giving to her soul the 
softest kiss, said to her at the second Sanetus : ' In this 
Sanetus addressed to my person, receive with this kiss all the 
sanctity of my divinity and of my humanity, and let it be to 
thee a sufficient preparation for the approaching communion 
table.' And the next following Sunday, while she was 
thanking God for this favor, behold the Son of God, more 
beauteous than thousands of angels, takes her in His arms as 
if He were proud of her, and presents her to God, the 
Father, in that perfection of sanctity with which He had 
dowered her. And the Father took such delight in this soul 
thus presented by His only Son, that, as if unable longer to 
restrain Himself, He gave her, and the Holy Ghost gave her 
also, the sanctity attributed to each by His own Sanetus, and 
thus she remained endowed with the plenary fullness of the 
blessing of Sanctity, bestowed on her by Omnipotence, by 
Wisdom, and by Love. " 2 

Francis Parkman states that the nuns sent over to America 
in colonization days were frequently seized with religio-sexual 
frenzy. " She heard, " he writes of Marie de l'lncarnation, 
", in a trance, a miraculous voice. It was that of Christ, 
promising to become her spouse. Months and years passed, 
full of troubled hopes and fears, when again the voice sounded 
in her ear, with assurance that the promise was fulfilled, and 
that she was indeed his bride. Now, ensued phenomena 
which are not infrequent among Roman Catholic female de- 
votees when married, or married unhappily, and which have 
their source in the necessities of a woman's nature. To her 
excited thought, her divine spouse became a living presence ; 
and her language to him, as recorded by herself, is of intense 
passion. She went to prayer, agitated and tremulous, as if 
to a meeting with an earthly lover. " Oh my Love ! " she 
exclaimed, ' ' when shall I embrace you ? Have you no pity 
on the torments that I suffer? Alas ! alas ! my Love ! my 

2 Revelations de Sainte Gertrude, Paris, 1898, i. 44, 186. Quoted by 
James, Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 345-6. 
2 



18 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

Beauty! my Life ! Instead of healing my pain you take 
pleasure in it. Come let me embrace you; and die in your 
sacred arms V 9 1 

This vital, interdependent relationship between the two 
impulses is so marked that, with perhaps only one excep- 
tion, Prof. Wm. James, 2 all who have given the matter se- 
rious thought have been forcibly impressed by it. Have- 
lock Ellis writes: "The intimate association between the 
emotions of love and religion is well known to all those who 
are habitually brought into close contact with the phenom- 
ena of the religious life. Love and religion are the two 
most volcanic emotions to which the human organism is lia- 
ble, and it is not surprising that when there is a disturbance 
in one of these spheres the vibrations should readily extend 
to the other. Nor is it surprising that the two emotions 
should have a dynamic relation to each other, and that the 
auto-erotic impulse being the more primitive and fundamen- 
tal of the two impulses should be able to pass its unexpended 
energy over to the religious emotion, there to find the ex- 
pansion hitherto denied it, the love of the human becoming 
the love of the divine. ' ,3 

Brinton sees in love one of the most important roots of 
religion. "The sentiment which attracts one sex to another, 
the passion of Love, exceeds all others in the power it exerts 
on the individual life. This it is, which in some of its forms, 
rude or refined, is at the root of half the expressions of the 
religious sentiment. We may trace it from crude and coarse 
beginnings in the genesaic cults of primitive peoples, through 
ever nobler and more delicate expressions, up through the 
celibate sacrifices of both sexes; spouses of God, until in 
its complete expansion it reaches the perfect agape, where the 
union of the human with the divine in the life eternal, here on 
earth, or beyond, one and the same, is believed to have been 
reached." 4 "The religious passion," writes Baring Gould, 
1 ' verges so closely on the sexual passion that a slight addi- 
tional pressure given to it bursts the partition, and both are 
confused in a frenzy of religious debauch. ' ' 5 Jennings: 6 
"It may be at once boldly asserted as a truth that there is not 

1 The Jesuits in North America, p. 175. 

2 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 11 footnote. 

3 Psych, of Sex, Vol. 2, Appendix C. . 

4 Rel. of Prim. Peoples, p. 170. 

6 Freaks of Fanaticism, p. 268. 6 Phallicism. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 19 

a religion that does not spring from the sexual distinctions. 
Religion is to be found alone with its justification and expla- 
nation in the relation between the sexes." Wier, 1 Howard, 2 
Forlong, 3 Westropp, 4 and many others express themselves 
in a similar strain. These writers, however, are extremists 
and their theories like all other exclusive theories fall before 
comprehensive criticism. All that we can probably say with 
any justice, is that sexual desire or love, is one, but only one, 
of the oldest sources of the religious sentiment. 

Coming to the alienists we find them in unison in main- 
taining that the closest relationship exists between the repro- 
ductive instinct and religion. Schroeder van der Kalk writes : 
"I venture to express my conviction that we should rarely 
err, if in a case of religious melancholy we assumed the sex- 
ual apparatus to be implicated. ' ' Esquirol, Friedreich, Regis, 
Berthier, Conolly Norman, Ball, Brouardel, Morselli, C. H. 
Hughes, Vallon and Marie, Krafft-Ebing, and Jos. Work- 
man, all concur with Yan der Kalk on this point. KrafTt- 
Ebing : « 'It suffices to recall how intense sexuality makes 
itself manifest in the clinical history of many religious 
maniacs ; the motley mixture of religious and sexual delu- 
sions that is so frequently observed in psychoses (e. g. in 
maniacal women who think they are or will be the mother of 
God), but particularly in masturbatic insanity , and finally the 
sexual, cruel self-punishment, injuries, self-castrations, and 
even self-crucifixions resulting from abnormal religio-sexual 
feeling. " 5 Spitzka: "All through the history of insanity the 
student has occasion to observe this close alliance of sexual 
and religious ideas ; an alliance which may be partly ac- 
counted for because of the prominence which sexual themes 
have in most creeds, as illustrated in ancient times by the 
phallus worship of the Egyptians ; the ceremonies of the 
Friga Cultus of the Saxons ; the frequent and detailed 
reference to sexual topics in the Koran and several other 
books of the kind, and which is further illustrated in the 
performances which, to come down to a modern period, 
characterize the religious revival and camp-meeting, as they 
tinctured their medieval model, the Minister Anabaptist 
movement. ' ' 6 

1 Religion and Lust, Louisville, Ky., 1897. 

2 Sex Worship, Washington, D. C, 1897. 

3 Rivers of Life, London. 

4 Primitive Symbolism, London, 1885. 

5 Psychopathia Sexualis, p. 8. 6 Insanity, p. 39. 



20 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

Again, it has been abundantly shown by Profs. Starbuck, 
Leuba, Coe, Lancaster, and others, that the earliest and most 
important religious crisis, conversion, is essentially a phenom- 
enon of adolescence and therefore synchronous with the de- 
velopment of sexual life. " Beyond a question of doubt," 
writes Wier, "man becomes religiously enthused most fre- 
quently either early in life when pubescence is, or is about to be 
established, or late in life when sexual desire has become 
either entirely extinct or very much abated." Likewise 
President Hall : " It is no accidental synchronism of unrelated 
events that the age of religion and that of sexual maturity 
coincide, any more than that senescence has its own type of 
religiosity. Nor is religion degraded by the recognition of 
this intimate relationship, save to those who either think 
vilely of sex or who lack insight into its real psychic nature 
and so fail to realize how indissoluble is the bond that God 
and nature have wrought between religion and love. Per- 
haps Plato is right, and love of the good, beautiful, and true 
is only love of sex transfigured and transcendentalized ; but 
the Gospel is better, which makes sex love at the best the 
type and symbol of love of God and man." 1 The words 
and phrases used as synonyms of conversion, such as ' regen- 
eration^ ' the new life,' etc., are also suggestive. 

It is further a well known fact that adolescent insanity is 
to a large extent due to disorders of the reproductive func- 
tion, and that in many cases the insanity expresses itself in 
some form of religious exaltation. To quote from Wier 
again, " Of all insanities of the pubescent state, erotomania 
and religious mania are the most frequent and the most pro- 
nounced. Sometimes they go hand in hand, the most inor- 
dinate sensuality being coupled with abnormal religious 
zeal." 2 Very interesting and suggestive in this connection 
are the many parallelisms between love and religion which 
President Hall, in the monumental work from which we 
have just quoted, has found and enumerated. We abbreviate 
the principal ones. 3 

1. The attitude of the lover and religionist towards death 
is the same. The fanatic rushes into the very jaws of death 
to avenge an insult to his God ; the ardent lover does as 

1 Adolesence, Vol. 2, pp. 292-293. The reader will here find the brief- 
est and yet most comprehensive treatment of the psychology of con- 
version that exists in any language. 

2 Religion and Lust, p. 94. 3 Adolesence, Vol. 2, pp. 295-301. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 21 

much for his offended lady love. The mystic yearns for 
death that he may become one with God ; the lover that he 
may become ' * the air that surrounds, the breeze that fans, or 
the ornament that adorns his beloved.' ' 

2. The soul in both is highly sensitive to nature. Both 
love and religion draw the curtains from the eyes of their 
votaries and show them beauties in nature to which they 
were previously blind. Jonathan Edwards, the God-intoxi- 
cated man of America, tells us that after his conversion, « « the 
appearance of everything altered ; there seemed to be, as it 
were, a calm, sweet cast or appearance of divine glory in almost 
everything, God ? s excellency, his wisdom, his purity, and love 
seemed to appear in everything, — in the sun, moon, and stars; 
in clouds, and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the 
water and all nature, which used greatly to fix my mind. I 
often used to sit and view the moon for continuance, and in the 
day spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to be- 
hold the sweet glory of God in these things; in the meantime 
singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the 
Creator and Redeemer. . . . Before, I used to be un- 
commonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck with ter- 
ror when I saw a thunder storm arising; but now, on the 
contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God, so to speak, at the 
first appearance of a thunderstorm, and used to take the op- 
portunity, at such times, to fix myself in order to view the 
clouds and see the lightnings play, and hear the majestic and 
awful voice of God 's thunder, which oftentimes was exceed- 
ingly entertaining, leading me to sweet contemplations of my 
great and glorious God." 

For the amorist, too, do the sun, moon, and stars, the 
clouds and blue sky, the flowers, grass, and trees, the winds 
and streams take on a new aspect and meaning, but to him 
they suggest not so much the glory of God as the rare beauty 
and sweet qualities of his Dulcinea. 

3. Love builds and decorates its nests and homes; re- 
ligion its towers and altars, its shrines, temples and cathe- 
drals. 

4. Both love and religion are subject to the laws of 
rhythm. Now the lover is elated with joy, now depressed 
with sadness ; the religionist now despises and scourges him- 
self, and is now ravished with delight because he has re- 
ceived some token of divine favor. 

5. Music and verse, the song and dance are vehicles of 



22 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

expression for both. " Music is the language of the feelings 
as speech is of the intellect, and the theme of by far the most 
music of the world is either love or religion. The melodies 
of the one often strangely fit the words of the other, while 
songs and hymns have always been one of the potent aphro- 
disiacs of religious affection, and will remain so as long as 
man is thumic or pectoral and must have emotion. ' ' 

6. The very many accurately prescribed forms and cere- 
monies employed in love making are paralleled in religion by 
the ' ' elaborate rituals, litanies, modes, postures, costumes, 
forms of phrase, times and places to be scrupulously ob- 
served, and often a cycle of more or less formalized acts for 
prayer and charity, and a repetition of phrases and ceremo- 
nial righteousness generally. ' ' 

7. Both have their fetiches, — " rings, tresses, handker- 
chiefs, and every article of dress or ornament, any one of 
which may and has become the only object capable of arous- 
ing genesic states. The very name assigned them, amatory 
fetiches, is significant. So in the history of religions, men 
have made idols of almost every object in nature which has 
been focused on to arouse crude and perverse religious feel- 
ings and sentiments. There is almost nothing that has not 
been worshipped, and there is a long catalogue of even scato- 
logical religious rites. Nearly every act and attitude have 
somewhere been regarded as worship, and also have else- 
where been used as passional provocatives. ' ' 

8. Just as man has been made by woman in manifold 
ways and in turn has made her, so, too, has man been made 
by God, and in turn made Him in his own image. 

9. Both hunger for a larger and fuller life, ' ' and the best 
work of each is to keep the other pure. ' ' 

We have, perhaps, given too much space to this topic, but 
its summary dismissal in a footnote by Prof. James makes it 
necessary to cite the very many authorities who disagree with 
him, and to marshal the facts which render his position unten- 
able. The sexual instinct exerts a great influence on art, 
morality, thought, in fact on all life. Can it be that it has 
no connection with one of the oldest and most fundamental 
of all human experiences ? 

Phallicism. 

In the religions of primitive peoples this relationship ap- 
pears, as we should expect, more clearly than in those of 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 23 

more advanced races. Of the many phenomena of nature 
which were constantly attracting the attention and considera- 
tion of primitive man, who had already begun to think, won- 
der, question, and seek for answers, few perhaps appeared 
more mysterious, and excited his curiosity more than those 
of procreation and reproduction. Whithersoever he turned 
he beheld manifestations of these powers. The clouds poured 
forth rain, the sun its warmth and light and presently beauti- 
ful flowers, grasses, trees, and fruits sprang out of the ground. 
The acorn now rotting in the forest later grew into a mighty 
oak, which bore countless numbers of other acorns. From 
the eggs of birds and fowls, other birds and fowls issued 
forth ; but more wonderful and mysterious than all was the 
mode of conception and birth of his own offspring as well as 
that of the higher animals. But who, and what, and whence 
are these hidden forces which bring new life, new beings 
into the world? These, and other similar questions must 
have perplexed the mind of the savage, as they do that of a 
child to-day. 1 But primitive man was not so fortunate as 
are our children ; he had no one to teach him and answer his 
questions ; he was not the heir to the accumulated learning 
of thirty centuries or more. He had either to answer his 
questions himself or leave them unanswered. Now, of all 
mental states the most painful and distressing are doubt, un- 
certainty, perplexity, and the like. Man must have some 
kind of an answer to the questions which are most vital and 
perplexing to him, he will not rest satisfied without one. 
We moderns have no definite facts concerning many subjects ; 
when we think of it there are surprisingly few subjects con- 
cerning which we do have definite and undisputed knowledge, 
but we have our theories, working hypotheses, beliefs, etc., 
which we hope either to verify or abandon in favor of better 
ones later on, but these are at present essential to our mental 
comfort and equipoise, and until we have more accurate 
knowledge we shall cling to them. So too with the primitive 
man. Every burning question received an answer imme- 
diately; generally a naive and fanciful one, but satisfying 
none the less. Accordingly we find him giving a childish, 
and yet perfectly natural interpretation to the phenomena of 
nature. To him nature was not so much organic and inor- 

1 For an excellent instance of this see James's Psychology, Vol. 1, 
p. 267, where he quotes from the reminiscences of Mr. Ballard, a deaf 
mute. 



24 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

gaiiic matter; he was ignorant even of the distinction. 
Everything possessed life ; everything, like himself had per- 
sonality, feeling, intellect, passion, and performed similar 
functions. He was a brother to the rocks and rills, the trees 
and plants, to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of 
the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth ; he 
and they were children of the same Pangenitor, the same 
mysterious Power, which is still addressed as Father. But 
now, who is this father ? and what is his nature? Different 
peoples, as we shall see, gave different answers, but they all 
seem to have agreed on one point, namely, the Power or 
Powers have sex. Indeed, it could hardly have been other- 
wise. Primitive man could not possibly have conceived of a 
living, active, creative and yet sexless being, and there are 
many to-day for whom such a conception is impossible. Con- 
sequently we find that the tribes who were first impressed 
with the grandeur and mystery of the celestial bodies, per- 
sonified these, considering the sun or sky, father ; the moon 
or earth, mother; the stars, their children or lesser divinities. 
Those, on the other hand, who were first drawn to con- 
template peculiar shaped stones, trees, rivers, etc., personi- 
fied and deified these, always careful to attribute to them 
the appropriate sex. Hence the countless male, female, and 
androgynous divinities of primitive, ancient, and even some 
modern peoples. 

Sexuality, however, was more than a mere distinguishing 
characteristic of the gods ; it was their most important attri- 
bute. The mysterious power which created the earth and 
all its living creatures, and transmitted to them the power to 
increase and multiply, that power is surely divine, and its 
form or body, — primitive man must invest every force or idea 
with a form — is, most naturally, similar to that of his own 
sexual organs. Now, so long as these organs, or representa- 
tions of them were regarded and perhaps reverenced as the 
most characteristic emblem or symbol of the Author of life, 
there was nothing pathological in the cult, nor even super- 
stitious in the true sense of the word, but just so soon as 
their symbolic nature was forgotten, and the organs or their 
representations were worshipped as divinities themselves, or 
when the people continued to perform phallic ceremonies 
after they had outgrown the cult, then the religion and its 
practices became degenerate and pathological. "Indecent 
rites," says Constant, " may be practiced by a religious peo- 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. ' 25 

pie with the greatest purity of heart. But when incredulity 
has gained a footing amongst these peoples, these rites be- 
come then the cause and pretext of the most revolting cor- 
ruption" * Likewise Voltaire : " Our ideas of propriety lead 
us to suppose that a ceremony which appears to us infamous 
could only be invented by licentiousness ; but it is impossible 
to believe that licentiousness and depravity of manners would 
ever have led among any people to the establishment of re- 
ligious ceremonies ; profligacy may have crept in in the lapse 
of time, but the original institution was always innocent and 
free from it ; the early agape, in which boys and girls kissed 
one another modestly on the mouth, degenerated at last into 
secret meetings and licentiousness. It is, therefore, probable 
that this custom was first introduced in times of simplicity, 
that the first thought was to honor the Deity in the symbol 
of life which it has given us." 

This, indeed, is true not only of phallicism, or phallo- 
ktenism, the worship of both male and female principles. 
In all forms of fetichism and idolatry there are apparent sev- 
eral stages of degeneration from the original normal cult. 
At first, as has already been said, the symbol or idol is 
recognized as such ; then it is revered and worshipped, per- 
haps, as the deity itself; later it becomes a mere charm or 
talisman against certain ills and evils ; and lastly, it is used 
as a cloak for all kinds of licentiousness and debaucheries. 
After this stage, if the race or tribe is a progressive one, a 
reformation generally sets in. 

The following are cited as illustrations of rites and cere- 
monies, which have undoubtedly degenerated from earlier 
and more innocent forms, — degenerations of which the par- 
ticipants and witnesses may have been wholly unconscious. 

The voyager Cook describes a religious ceremony he wit- 
nessed among a certain Indian tribe as follows : ' ' A young 
man, near six feet high, performed the rites of Venus with 
a little girl, about eleven or twelve years of age, before sev- 
eral of our people and a great number of the natives; but, as 
appeared, in perfect conformity to the custom of the place. 
Among the spectators were several women of superior rank, 
particularly Oberea, who may properly be said to have as- 
sisted at the ceremony, for they gave instruction to the girl 
how to perform her part." 2 Voltaire, in "Les Oreilles du 



1 Human Polytheism. 2 Cook's First Voyage. 



26 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

Comte de Chesterfield ' ' gives a lengthy account of a similar 
ceremony. 

Herodotus, writing of the Chaldeans, says, " Every 
woman born in the country must enter once during her life- 
time the enclosure of the temple of Aphrodite ; must there 
sit down and unite herself to a stranger. Many who are 
wealthy are too proud to mix with the rest, and repair thither 
in closed chariots, followed by a considerable train of slaves. 
The greater number seat themselves on the sacred pavement, 
with a cord twisted about their heads. And there is always 
a crowd there, coming and going ; the women being divided 
by ropes into long lanes, down which strangers pass to make 
their choice. A woman who has once taken her place here 
cannot return home until a stranger has thrown into her lap 
a silver coin, and has led her away with him beyond the limits 
of the sacred enclosure. As he throws the money he pro- 
nounces these words : ' May the goddess Mylitta (Aphro- 
dite) make thee happy. ' The woman follows the first man 
who throws her the money and repels no one. When once 
she has accompanied him, and has thereby satisfied the god- 
dess, she returns to her home, and from thenceforth, however 
large the sum offered to her, she will yield to no one. ' ' Mas- 
pero states that this custom still existed in the fifth century 
B. C. A similar custom is recorded in the Book of Baruch 
VI, 43. Orgies of this nature were of common occurrence 
among the Algonkins and Iroquois, and are often mentioned 
in the Jesuit relations. Menegas describes them as frequent 
among the tribes of Lower California, and Oviedo writes of 
certain festivals among the Nicaraguans, " during which the 
women of all rank extended to whosoever wished, such privi- 
leges as the matrons of ancient Babylon used to grant even 
to the slaves and strangers in the temple of Mylitta, as one 
of the duties of religion. ' ' 

Excesses like these, and others even worse constituted, 
until quite recently, the religious rites and ceremonies of the 
natives of Mexico and Central America, of the Pueblo Indi- 
ans of Arizona, the natives of Paraguay, the ancient Floridi- 
ans, the Guaycurus of Brazil, and others. 1 

Turning again to the ancient Orient we find women in 
Mendes submitting themselves nude and openly to the em- 
braces of the sacred goat, which represented the incarnation 

1 See Brinton : The Myths of the New World, p. 175 ff. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 27 

of the procreative deity. Among the Corinthians, in cer- 
tain cities in Egypt, and among the Brahmins delubral heta- 
rism was openly practiced, and regarded as a praiseworthy 
act. In the Temple of Venus at Corinth there were as many 
as a thousand sacred prostitutes, and as many in a temple of 
the same goddess at Eryx. Even princesses were pallicides 
and took pride in the title of pallakis. 1 Of the Armenians, 
Strabo writes, " It is the custom of the most illustrious per- 
sonages to consecrate their virgin daughters to this goddess 
(Anaitis) . This in no way prevents them from finding hus- 
bands even after they have prostituted themselves for a long 
time in the temple of Anaitis. No man feels on this account 
any repugnance to take them as wives." 2 Many Greek and 
Roman temples were dedicated to the phallus, and filled with 
hetarae. We need only mention such festivals as the Bac- 
chanalia, Florolia, Saturnalia, the Liberalia, and the festival 
of Venus. The scathing satires of Juvenal, who tells us in 
one place that every temple in Rome was practically a 
licensed brothel, the writings of Suetonius, Tacitus and Sene- 
ca among pagan writers ; and the Epistle of Paul to the 
Romans, and the writings of St. Augustine among Christ- 
ians all show us to what depths of moral degradation and 
licentiousness the Romans had fallen in their religious cer- 
emonies and festivals. " I myself , when a young man," 
says St. Augustine, "used sometimes to go to the sacrile- 
gious entertainments and spectacles ; I saw the priests raving 
in religious excitement, and heard the choristers ; I took 
pleasure in the shameful games which were celebrated in the 
honor of gods and goddesses, of the virgin Ccelestis, and of 
Berecynthia, the mother of all gods. And on the day con- 
secrated to her purification, there were sung before her couch 
productions so obscene and filthy to the ear — I do not say 
of the mother of the gods, but of the mother of any senator 
or honest man, — nay, so impure that not even the mother of 
the foul-mouthed players themselves could have formed one 
of the audience." 3 

Mr. Lecky remarks that the pages of Seutonius are i ' an 
eternal witness of abysses of depravity, hideous and intoler- 
able cruelty, and hitherto unimagined extravagances of name- 
less lust, " 4 and .Gibbon tells us that in writing his history 

1 Wier: Religion and Lust, p. 48 ff. 

2 Quoted by Letourneau, Evol. of Marriage, p. 46. 

3 Civ. Dei, ii, 4. 4 Hist, of European Morals. 



28 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

he was forced to leave all the licentious passages « « in the ob- 
scurity of a learned language. ; ' 

As late as the latter part of the eighteenth century, Priapus 
had his votaries almost within the shadow of the Vatican, 
but these rites were so obscene that they were finally abol- 
ished by episcopal command. At Lyons, in France, there 
was an immense wooden phallus, which the women were in 
the habit of scraping and steeping the wood-dust in water, 
which they drank as a remedy against barrenness. In other 
parts of France the women would embrace or glide down long 
pointed stones for the same reason. Indeed such practices 
were common throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, 
and have not yet entirely disappeared, according to the testi- 
mony of Prof. Sergi. It is this practice which Ezekiel so bit- 
terly condemned. "Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of 
my gold and my silver, which I have given thee, and madest 
to thyself images of men and didst commit whoredom with 
them." (xvi, 17.) Priapus was also worshipped by the 
Teutons, under the name Frea, and his female consort cor- 
responding to Venus, under the name of Friga. 

The words « fascinate ' and 'fascination, ' derived from the 
Latin « fascinum, ' which was one of the names of the male 
organ of generation, also point to the prevalence of this cult 
among the early Anglo Saxons. The 'fascinum 7 was worn 
suspended from the necks of women, and was supposed to 
possess magical powers ; hence to fascinate. As late as the 
eighth century the Judicia Sacerdotalia Criminibus contained 
the { folio wing law : " If any one has performed incantation to 
the fascinum, ' or any incantation whatever, except one who 
chants the creed or the Lord 's Prayer, let him do penance 
on bread and water during three Lents. " During the ninth 
and twelfth centuries the same law was repeated, showing 
that the worship of the generative principle was continuous 
throughout that time. 

In 1247 the statutes of the Synod of Mans declared that 
" he who worshipped the « fascinum' shall be seriously dealt 
with." 

At the present day certain sects in Russia, such as the 
'Christs,' the 'Skoptsy,' a few in Hungary, and Japan,i 
and the Kauchiluas of India perform religious ceremonies 
during which they abandon themselves to the most unbridled 

1 Edmund Buckley: Phallicism in Japan. Univ. of Chicago. Thesis. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 29 

depravity. In the religious ceremonies of the « Christs ' the 
adoration of the sacred Virgin in the person of a woman, 
plays a large role. A beautiful, robust, intelligent woman 
is proclaimed sacred Virgin, or niece of God. In the eyes of 
the « Christs,' she is the personification of the Divinity, or 
rather she is the emblem of the generative force. In their 
chants and prayers the « Christs ' glorify mother earth, which 
they identify with the sacred Virgin. This principle of 
female deification is also one of the chief features of the re- 
ligion of the Skoptsy. 1 

Among the Kauchiluas these rites are carried to the most 
shameful and pathological extreme. During their religious 
ceremonies all family ties are completely obliterated, in honor 
of the Creator and his divine function. The women, maids 
and matrons, deposit their bodices in a box, each garment 
and each woman being numbered by a priest. At the close 
of the ritual of song and prayer, each male worshipper takes 
a bodice from the box, and the woman who has the number 
corresponding to that on the garment, even though it be the 
sister or daughter of the man who draws it, becomes his 
partner for the fulfillment of that which has been the subject 
of their worship and praise during the preceding ceremonies. 
This rite and the wild excesses that are sometimes incidental 
to it is engaged in by the most devout and pure-minded 
men and women, the majority of whom, when not observing 
this ceremony (which they consider a sacred and solemn ob- 
servance of their faith), are as modest and chaste as any de- 
votees of their more enlightened fellow beings of the western 
world. 2 

The rite of prelibation which obtained among many primi- 
tive and barbarous people, and is still practiced by some 
of them, belongs to this category of rites. In Malabar the 
queen herself, as well as her meanest subject, had to submit 
to this rite exercised by the high priest, who was given the 
first three nights and paid fifty pieces of gold besides. 3 

In Cambodia, De Remusat tells us, the daughters of poor 
parents retain their virginity longer than their richer sisters, 
simply because they have not the money with which to pay 
the priest for defloration. An analogous custom is the i jus 
primae noctis ' practiced by many tribes, according to which 

1 N. Tsakni: La Russie Sectaire, pp. 63-97. 

2 Howard: Sex Worship, p. 149 ft. 

3 Letourneau : Evolution of Marriage, p. 48. 



30 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

the woman on her bridal night has to yield herself up to the 
male marriage guests. Another variation of this rite was 
the sacrifice of maidenhood to an image of the Creator. This 
custom prevailed in Rome, where the marriage laws required 
the bride to sacrifice her virginity to Priapus before the nup- 
tials could be consummated. This she did immediately after 
the marriage ceremony, in the presence of her husband, 
parents, and friends. The object of the ceremony was both 
to render unto God His due, and to become fruitful by the 
contact with the image of the Creator. 1 

Again, the worship of certain animals, such as the serpent, 
the bull, the goat, the cock, the tortoise, etc., the worship 
of trees, such as the pine, fir, oak, fig, palm, etc., the wor- 
ship of plants, vegetables and cereals, such as the lotus, the 
onion, rice, maize, turnip, sweet potato, etc., the worship of 
mounds, rocks, stone pillars, — all these have a more or less 
phallic significance, and are degenerations of purer and more 
primitive forms of natural religion. 2 

The above, it is hoped, is sufficient to show not only the 
close connection between the religious and sexual impulses, 
but also the great dangers, physical, mental, and moral, 
which attend the uncontrolled expression of each. The im- 
portance of the subject, especially to religious teachers who 
have adolescents in their charge, cannot be emphasized too 
strongly. Sound pedagogy here is more necessary than in 
any other field of education, religious or secular. 

Renunciation and Restraint. 

The degenerations thus far considered are paralleled in 
many religions by others of an opposite and even more in- 
jurious nature. In every age and land there have been those 
who imagined that their deities are best served when all sex- 
ual affairs are abstained from, when the sexual nature is 
completely abnegated. For many of these, mere continence 
or celibacy is not sufficient ; the sexual organs must be ex- 
tirpated. This practice has at one time or another been per- 
formed in all parts of the globe. The ceremony of castration 
formed a part of the annual celebration of the festival of 
Attis and Cybele. According to the legend, Cybele, the 
earth or mother goddess, fell in love with the beautiful youth 

1 Howard: Sex Worship, p. 88. 

2 See works cited above and Lef evre, La Religion, p. 58 ff . 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 31 

Attis, of whom she made a priest and exacted the vow of 
chastity. Attis, however, having broken his vow for the 
sake of a lovely nymph, was deprived of his reason by the 
goddess, and in his frenzy he castrated himself, whereupon 
the goddess ordained that thereafter all her priests should be 
eunuchs. 

In commemoration of this legend, there was held each 
year, in the spring time, a wild and noisy, yet sacred and 
solemn festival. It began in quiet and sorrow for the death- 
like sleep of Attis. On the third day joy broke forth and 
was manifested by delirious hilarity. The frenzied priests of 
Cybele rushed about in bands, with haggard eyes and di- 
shevelled hair, like drunken revelers and insane women. In 
one hand they carried burning fire-brands, and in the other 
they brandished the sacred knife. They dashed into the 
woods and valleys, and climbed the mountain heights, keep- 
ing up a horrible noise and continual groaning. An intoxi- 
cating drink rendered them wild. They beat each other with 
the chains they carried, and when they drew blood upon their 
companions or themselves, they danced with wild and tumult- 
uous gesticulations, flogging their backs and piercing their 
limbs and even their bodies. Finally, in honor of their god- 
dess, they turned the sacred knife upon their genitals, and 
calling upon their deity showed their gaping wounds and 
offered her the spoils of their destroyed vitality. After re- 
covering from this self-inflicted emasculation, these initiates 
adopted woman's dress, and were then ready to become 
priests or, failing in that, to take their place among the at- 
tendants of the temple, and engage in pederasty for the bene- 
fit of the temple treasury, whenever the patrons might prefer 
such indulgence to that afforded by the consecrated women. 1 

Among the Pueblo Indians there are mujerados or emascu- 
lated men who serve as hetaree to the chiefs and shamans. 
As a result of the terrible abuses to which they subject them- 
selves in order to become mujerados, the testicles and penis 
atrophy, the hair of the beard falls out, the voice loses its 
depth and compass, and physical strength and energy de- 
crease. The mujerado becomes feminine in his inclinations 
and disposition, takes on feminine manners and customs, as- 
sociates with women, and loses his position in society as a 
man. He is held, however, in high honor for religious rea- 

1 Howard: Sex Worship, p. 77 seq. 



32 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

sons. The ceremonies take place in the spring when the life- 
principle is exceedingly active. 1 

1 'Masculine hetarism, ' ' writes Letourneau, ' « is still in vogue 
among many primitive peoples, and is distinctly a religious 
rite. The Canats of New Caledonia frequently assemble at 
night in a cabin to give themselves up to this kind of de- 
bauchery." 2 

"Certain classes of Aztec priesthood practiced complete 
abscission or discerption of the virile parts, and a mutilation 
of females was not unknown, similar to that which has ex- 
isted immemorially in Egypt. ' ' 3 When the Spanish mis- 
sionaries reached Southern California they found some of the 
native males dressed as women and assuming their part. 
Indeed, it may be said that in the whole of North and South 
America such and similar customs have existed, and in some 
parts exist to the present day. Castration is to-day the 
fundamental tenet of the Skoptsy of Russia, who quote in 
justification of their beliefs and practices, Matt. 19 : 12, in 
which Christ says to his disciples, < « There are some eunuchs 
which were born so from their mother's womb ; and there 
are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men ; and 
there be some eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs 
for the kingdom of heaven's sake." 

The motives which lie behind these practices are many and 
varied. Among primitive peoples the practice was probably 
of accidental origin and was perpetuated because it rendered 
the subjects peculiar and gained for them the respect and 
reverence of their fellows who considered them, on that ac- 
count, as somehow or other divine. Or it may have origin- 
ated in the perverted sexual instinct still manifested by some 
tramps and degenerates who possess many atavistic traits and 
in other respects closely resemble their primitive prototypes. 4 

Another motive is to be found in the strong desire to please 
and propitiate the deity by sacrificing the greatest of human 
blessings and pleasures in accordance with the ancient and 
widespread belief that God is best pleased when His creatures 
are most miserable, and hence, the greater the sacrifice, the 
greater the pleasure afforded Him. Again, the desire to 
stifle the promptings of the carnal nature, to renounce all 

1 See Krafft-Ebing: Psychopathia Sexualis, p. 201; Hammond: Impo- 
tence in the Male. 

2 Evol. of Marriage, p. 62. 

8 Brinton: Myths of the New World, p. 173. 

4 See Josiah Flint's article in Havelock Ellis's Psych, of Sex. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion, 33 

worldly affairs, maintain purity of morals, and to wrap them- 
selves entirely in God were the motives which prompted the 
struggles of the early Christian Fathers and the many devo- 
tees who have since followed in their footsteps. 

These motives we have enumerated are, of course, the 
most superficial ones. The real and ultimate motives or 
causes are to be found in the temperaments of the peoples, 
the nature of the psychic soils or nervous systems whence 
spring these beliefs and practices. That is, if we wish to 
understand why some peoples give themselves up to excessive 
sexual indulgence and entertain beliefs which justify them, 
while others entertain beliefs which justify their exces- 
sive restraint of natural impulses, we must look for the 
causes not in the beliefs, but in the antecedent and more 
fundamental factors, such as climate, soil, food-products, the 
nature and spirit of the age, the influence of heredity, sug- 
gestion, imitation, etc., all of which combined, shape the 
minds and determine the beliefs and conduct of men to an 
extent which is incalculable. In other words, we must go to 
geography, psychology, and their kindred sciences for our 
answers, and not to the various theologies. 

Hate and Anger. 

The opposite of love is hate, and like the opposite sides of 
a shield they are always together. The good lover is also a 
good hater, and vice versa. He who loves God, virtue, 
honor, truth, beauty, etc., must hate the devil, baseness, 
falsehood, ugliness, etc. 

4 « In the love of Christ and his maid-mother, ' ' confessed 
Queen Isabella, ' i I have caused great misery, and have de- 
populated towns and districts, provinces and kingdoms." 
In Spain alone, it is estimated that down to the year 1809 
about 350,000 were either burnt or imprisoned and persecuted 
in the name of religion. And in all times intense lovers of 
God have cried out: " Shall I not hate them, O Lord, that 
hate Thee, and rise up against them that rise up against 
Thee ? Yea I hate them right sore, as if they were mine 
enemies." 1 

It was the furious hatred for the Prince of the power of air 
that blinded the God-loving and otherwise level-headed Puri- 
tans, and made the witchcraft madness possible among them. 

1 St. Luke, 14 : 26, 27. 
3 



34 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

Believing, as they did, that Satan with his confederates, the 
witches, were about to make an onslaught upon the New 
World, they determined to fight him and them to the bitter 
end and exterminate them from the land. Writes one of 
their contemporaries, . . . "the Devil is now making 
one Attempt more upon us, an Attempt more difficult, more 
surprising, more snarled with unintelligible circumstances, than 
any that we have hitherto encountered ; an Attempt so critical 
that if we get well through, we shall soon enjoy Halcyon 
Days, with all the Vultures of Hell trodden under our feet." 1 

Jonathan Edwards in « ' The End of the Wicked Contem- 
plated by the Righteous ; or the Torments of the Wicked in 
Hell no Occasion of Grief to the Saints in Heaven," says, 
"When they have this sight it will excite them to joyful 
praises." " The damned and their miseries, their sufferings 
and the wrath of God poured out upon them will be an occa- 
sion of joy to them." Andrew Wellwood says, picturing the 
future, * i I am overjoyed in hearing the everlasting howlings 
of the haters of the Almighty. What a pleasant melody are 
they in mine ears ! O, Eternal hallelujahs to Jehova and the 
Lamb! O, sweet ! sweet! My heart is satisfied. We com- 
mitted our cause to Thee that judgeth righteously, and be- 
hold Thou hast fully pleaded our Cause, and shall make the 
smoke of their torment forever and ever to ascend in our 
sight." 2 

Even the great Preacher Himself, He who preached to the 
world the Gospel of Love, declared, " If any one come to Me, 
and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, 
and brethren, and sisters yea, and his own life also, he can- 
not be My disciple ; and whosoever doth not bear his cross, 
and come after Me, cannot be My disciple." 

These injunctions were too literally obeyed by very many 
ascetics and fanatics of succeeding generations. St. Jerome, 
exulting in his own atrophied and diseased feelings, tells 
Heliodorous, whom he exhorts to leave his family and become 
a hermit, ' ' Though your little nephew twine his arms around 
your neck ; though your mother, with dishevelled hair and 
tearing her robe asunder, point to the breast with which she 
suckled you ; though your father fall down on the threshold 
before you, pass on over your father 's body. Fly with tear- 

1 Quoted in R. H. Allen, The New England Tragedies in Prose, p. 97. 

2 Colin Scott : Old Age and Death: Am. Jour. Psych. Vol. 8, p. 111. 
See also Davenport: Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, passim. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 35 

less eyes to the banner of the cross. In this matter cruelty 
is the only piety. . . . Your widowed sister may throw 
her gentle arms around you. . . . Your father may im- 
plore you to wait but a short time to bury those near to you, 
who will soon be no more ; your weeping mother may recall 
your childish days, and may point to her shrunken breast and 
to her wrinkled brow. Those around you may tell you that 
all the household rests upon you. Such chains as these, the 
love of God and the fear of hell can easily break. You say 
that Scripture orders you to obey your parents, but he who 
loves them more than Christ loses his soul, etc." The Lives 
of the Saints are full of accounts of the cruelties of their sub- 
jects to their parents and nearest kin. Indeed, it seems that 
the Christianity of the Middle Ages was a religion of hate and 
cruelty and not of love and kindness as its Founder and His 
disciples intended it to be. "To outrage the affections of the 
nearest and dearest relations, " writes Mr. Lecky, "was 
usually regarded not only as innocent, but proposed as the 
highest virtue. 'A young man, ' it was acutely said, « who 
has learnt to despise a mother's grief, will easily bear any 
other labor that is imposed upon him.' " 1 

Indeed, to tell the story of religious hate, the role it has 
played in the history of mankind, would require the recount- 
ing of all the religious wars, massacres, holocausts, inquisi- 
tions, and persecutions, the perusal of which sickens the soul, 
and makes passionate men cry out against religion itself. 
The Old Testament fairly teems with accounts of fierce wars 
and massacres and inhuman deeds which were due to the in- 
tense hate of Israel for all unbelievers and enemies of their 
Jehovah. The pagan Roman hated and persecuted the early 
Christian, later the Catholics and Protestants hated and per- 
secuted each other, both hated the Jew, Mohammedan, 
heathen and atheist, and all have heartily despised each other. 
We cannot, of course, enter into details, or treat the subject 
even in its barest outlines. To do so would require a volume 
in itself. Suffice it to say that while love is the keynote of 
almost all religious teachings, both oral and written, hate has 
played the leading role in religious history, and made it one 
long religious tragedy. 

Mention should here be made of a peculiar religion which 
seems to have been born entirely of hate and cruelty. It is 

1 History of European Morals, Vol. 2, p. 142. 



36 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

called Thugism, and was discovered in India by the English 
in the early part of the nineteenth century. The beginnings 
of this sect reach back to legendary times. According to an 
ancient Hindu myth a demon once roamed over the earth and 
devoured human beings as fast as they were created. Of such 
gigantic size was he that he could wade across the ocean, and 
in the most unfathomable parts the water would not reach his 
waist. There was no earthly power that could restrain him, 
and for a long time he kept the world unpeopled. Finally 
Kalee or Devi, the goddess of destruction, came to the res- 
cue. She attacked the demon, and cut him down ; but from 
every drop of his blood another demon arose ; and though 
the goddess continued to cut down these rising demons with 
wonderful alacrity and skill, fresh broods of demons sprang 
from their blood, as from that of their progenitors ; and the 
diabolical race consequently multiplied with fearful rapidity. 
The never ending labor of cutting down demons, whose 
number was only increased by this operation of pruning, at 
length fatigued and disheartened the goddess ; she found it 
necessary to make a change in her tactics ; — and here the 
tale which is thus far received by all Hindoos becomes sub- 
ject to variations. According to Thug mythology, the god- 
dess, when she became embarrassed by the constant reinforce- 
ments of the demon army, which accrued from her labors, 
relinquished all personal efforts for their suppression, and 
formed two men from the perspiration brushed from her arms. 
To each of these men she gave a handkerchief with which 
they were commanded to put all demons to death, without 
shedding a drop of blood. Her commands were faithfully 
executed ; and the demons were all strangled without delay. 
The champions, having vanquished all the demons, offered 
to return the handkerchiefs, but their patroness, in the spirit 
of a grateful goddess, desired that they would retain them, 
not merely as memorials of their heroism, but as implements 
of a lucrative trade in which their descendants were to labor 
and thrive. They were not only permitted but commanded 
to strangle men as they had strangled demons. 1 

This explanation of the origin and work of their diabolical 
order is, on the face of it, one which was manufactured post 
rem to justify some long series of murders and robberies and 

1 ''Illustrations of the History and Practices of the Thugs." Anony- 
mous, London, 1837. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 37 

later served, as shall be seen, as an incentive to commit many 
more such crimes. 

There is no doubt, however, that the Thugs, when dis- 
covered by the English in the early part of the nineteenth cen- 
tury regarded themselves as devotees engaged in the service of 
their deity. They committed their murders according to rig- 
idly prescribed forms ; only after the performance of special 
religious rites, and always scrupulously divided the spoils 
with their goddess. The instruments of murder and burial 
were held by them in the highest veneration. An oath taken 
by the pick- axe was as binding to them as the Koran is to the 
Mohammedan, or the Bible to the Chiistian. That they did 
not consider themselves murderers, but merely agents work- 
ing out the will of their goddess, is evident from the replies 
which one of the Thugs gave to his questioner. Q. "How 
many people have you in the course of your life killed with 
your own hands, at a rough guess?" A. "I have killed 
none." Q. "Have you not been just describing tome a 
number of murders?'' A. "Yes; but do you suppose I 
could have committed them ? Is any man killed from man 's 
killing ? Is it not the hand of God that kills him, and are we 
not mere instruments in the hand of God ? ' ' And another on 
being asked whether he never felt compunction in murdering 
innocent people, answered with a smile, "Does any man feel 
compunction in following his trade ? And are not all our 
trades assigned us by Providence ? ' ' The Thug believed he 
was ' called' to be a slayer of men, and piously obeyed the 
' call. ' ' 'He educated his children to pursue the same 
career, instilling into their minds, at the earliest age, that 
Thuggee is the noblest profession a man can follow, and that 
the dark goddess they worship will always provide rich trav- 
ellers for her zealous devotees. ' ■ 1 

These beliefs remind us immediately of the total depravity 
and fatalistic predestination doctrines of Calvin and Jonathan 
Edwards, in which there is,, perhaps, more hate than love. 
Again, Luther's 'fated will ' doctrine is similar. "The 
human will, " says Luther, "is like a beast of burden. If 
God mounts it, it wishes and goes as God wills ; if Satan 
mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills. Nor can it 
choose the rider it would prefer, or betake itself to him, but 
it is the riders who contend for its possession. " It is need- 

1 Mackay : Popular Delusions, Vol. 1, p. 382. 



38 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

less to point out that such doctrines annihilate at one sweep 
all moral responsibility, and can be used as a convenient 
cloak to cover a multitude of sins, even the worst. 

In the northern part of Russia there is a religious sect re- 
sembling in some respects the Thugs. Little, however, is 
known of these except that they adore St. Nicholas, the 
1 chicken thief, ' who is considered the patron saint of all 
thieves, and aids them in their enterprises. These religious 
thieves have also recourse to other supernatural forces. They 
sometimes disinter the dead, considering it as a talisman to 
have about them the finger or hand of a corpse, or a taper 
made of human fat. 1 There is another, and more pathological 
sect in Russia, which belongs to this category. This sect, 
known as the Religious Suicides, teaches that the world must 
soon crumble to pieces and perish, and therefore it is be- 
hooving to leave this life of vanity and sin, and seek surcease 
from all ills in death. To those who consent to give up their 
lives they promise deliverance from the eternal torments of 
hell, and the delights of paradise. Their chants are charac- 
terized by a mournful despair, and hate of life. The follow- 
ing is one of the methods employed by some of these secta- 
rians to rid themselves of their unhappy lives. The convert 
having expressed his desire to die is brought into an unin- 
habited hut accompanied only by the preacher who reads the 
Psalms. At the end of a certain time, a door opens, and the 
emblem of death presents himself, — a large, robust man 
clothed in a red robe. Placing a cushion over the head of 
the convert he seats himself on it and remains in that position 
until the unfortunate fanatic is asphyxiated. At the beginning 
of the nineteenth century, there were, along the banks of the 
Volga, a large number of preachers belonging to several dif- 
ferent sects who preached salvation by suicide, and made 
numerous converts. These would gather with their wives 
and children in some cave or wood and after certain cere- 
monies would massacre each other. Individual cases of 
religious suicide are still frequent in Russia, but suicides en 
masse have ceased owing to police surveillance. 2 

Pity. 
It would be difficult indeed to overestimate the role that 

1 Tsakni: La Russie Sectaire, p. 14. 

2 See N. Tsakni: op. cit., pp. 97-118 ; also M. Collindau: Le Delire Re- 
ligieux, Bull, de la Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris, Vol. 10, 1875. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 39 

pity has played not only in the religious life, but in the 
secular life as well. President Hall, 1 in one of his searching 
articles, has shown what a large and important part it plays 
in the lives of children and adults ; and Herbart, as we have 
already seen, considered it the essential principle of religion. 
In both the Old and New Testaments God is called a merci- 
ful and pitying God, and want of pity is considered an un- 
pardonable sin. "For three transgressions of Edom, and 
for four (saith the Lord), I will not turn away the punish- 
ment thereof ; because he did pursue his brother with the 
sword, and did cast off all pity, and his anger did tear per- 
petually, and he kept his wrath forever." 2 Some writers 
have spoken of pity as the essential teaching of Christianity. 
It certainly takes rank next to love . * ' The sentiment of pity, ' ' 
writes President Hall, « < has played a role of supreme im- 
portance in the spread of Christianity. Hundreds of returns 
specify particularly all the experiences of Passion week. 
Some are most completely melted at the desertion of Christ 
by his disciples, others at the betrayal, others by his struggles 
of soul with himself and with the Father in Gethsemane, but 
most prominent of all in this galaxy of incitations to pathos 
is the crucifixion itself and the incidents connected with it. 
The stations of the Cross are often mentioned ; Christ com- 
mending his mother to the care of the beloved disciple ; the 
prayer, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
do ; Christ met by his mother on the way to Calvary ; taken 
from the Cross and laid upon the bosom of the mother of 
sorrows ; the scene where Christ is stripped of his garments, 
his flesh bruised and torn from the scourging ; the long jour- 
ney up the hill with the heavy Cross and the three falls 
under its weight ; Mary at the foot of the Cross seeing the 
Divine Son suffer and unable to even wipe the blood from 
his face." 

But these incidents do not bring tears to the eyes of all. 
God on the Cross would not excite pity in Nietzsche, for in- 
stance ; he would turn away from such a spectacle with shame 
and scorn. The * Ubermensch, ' he tells us, " maketh his 
law to be ashamed in the presence of all that suffereth. " 
And again, " Thus the devil once said unto me : 'Even God 
hath his own hell : that is his love unto men, ' . . . And 
recently I heard the word said : * God is dead ; he hath died 

1 Saunders and Hall: ''Pity, 1 ' Amer. Jour. Psy., Vol. 11, July, 1900. 

2 Amos, 1 : 11. 



40 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

of his pity for man.' " Zeno and Spinoza regard pity, bad in 
itself, and Darwin in his theory of the « survival of the fit- 
test ' has little or no room for it. But the ' survival of the 
fittest ' law is unfit for civilized men, as indeed it is for all 
the higher animals. Were this the supreme and inviolable 
law of nature the higher form of life could not have evolved. 
The higher the animal is in the scale of life the fewer are its 
offspring, and the greater and longer are their periods of 
helplessness. Had not nature, therefore, evolved love, and 
pity, and sympathy, these offspring would, according to the 
above law, be either devoured or left to perish. But nature 
has implanted the tender instincts in the hearts of parents, 
and as a consequence we find them instinctively violating 
Darwin's law and risking their lives for the survival of the 
weak and the unfit. M. Kropatkin, in his recent masterly 
work, Mutual Aid, shows convincingly that the severe * strug- 
gle for survival,' of which so much has been made since 
Darwin, is more or less a myth. Mutual aid rather than 
mutual destruction is, according to him, the reigning law in 
the animal world. From love and pity of one's own progeny, 
these emotions irradiate and cover the progeny of others of 
the same species, and finally to everything that is powerless 
and helpless, the young and old alike. In man these emo- 
tions are sometimes so highly developed as to be entirely 
divorced from reason. Man loves and pities he knows not 
why, and not infrequently when he knows he should not. 
From this to a pathological development of pity is but a short 
step. 

The true pedagogy of pity is, as President Hall has shown, 
not to eradicate it entirely from the soul, nor on the other 
hand to lavish it promiscuously and indiscriminately upon 
4 * the undervitalized poor, the moribund sick, defectives, and 
criminals, because by aiding such to survive, the process of 
wholesome natural selection by which all that is best has 
hitherto been developed, will be interfered with. Pity needs 
new ideals. Its work is no longer the salvage of the wreck- 
age of humanity, but if Jesus came to our biological age he 
would be crucified afresh in the thwarted ambitions and 
blighted ideals of those most noble, yet most often crushed 
by circumstances, over which they have no control. Pity has 
as its highest office then, in removing handicaps from those 
most able to help man to higher levels, — the leaders on more 
exalted plains who can be of most aid in ushering in the king- 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 41 

dom of the superman." In other words we must learn not 
to cease to pity but to pity aright. 

Like the other emotions, pity has, at times, been unduly 
focused upon and led to many morbid excesses. Pity and 
sympathy are the nearest approaches we have to suffering 
and pain, and in some cases they actually pass over into the 
latter. Cases of religious stigmatization, like that of St. Fran- 
cis of Assissi and Louise Lateau, are the most extreme and 
pathological examples of this. For more than four years 
blood flowed regularly every Friday from the left side of the 
latter' s chest, from both feet, the palms and backs of both 
hands, and also her forehead. According to her physician, 
Dr. Lefebvre, the quantity of blood lost on each occasion was 
about seven-eights of a quart. x 

In many of President Hall' s returns a single incident was sin- 
gled out of a whole situation. The very sound of the word 
« nail ' produced a nervous shudder in one ; another, « ' on 
seeing old nails that looked antique felt a pain in her palms, 
and sometimes in her feet from the strength of her imagina- 
tion ' ' Still another felt them so intensely that it seems quite 
likely "that she is well on toward stigmata." 2 In all, 
twenty-eight were profoundly affected by nail items ; others 
centered on the sharp thorns, the vinegar, falling under the 
cross, trial before Pilate, etc. 

The religious sect which has focused upon pity more, per- 
haps, than any other, is that of the Jains of India. These 
believe that every object, even plants, minerals, water, fire, 
etc., possesses a soul, and therefore they abstain from de- 
stroying even the minutest animal, deeming the destruction 
of any sentient creature the most heinous of crimes. Lest 
they should accidentally tread upon an insect they always 
carry at their girdles a small broom with which they tenderly 
sweep aside every insect which they may observe hi their 
path. "To so senseless a length do they carry this principle, 
that they will Dot pluck any herb or vegetable, or partake of 
any sort of food, which may be supposed to contain animal- 
culse ; so that the only articles of sustenance remaining to 
them appear to be rice, and a few sorts of pulse, which they 
cook with milk. They affirm, indeed, that it is as foul a 
murder to kill an insect as to slay a man ; and so extreme is 
their precaution to avoid the commission of the crime, that it 

1 F. W. H. Myers: Human Personality, Vol. 1, p. 492. 

2 Saunders and Hall: Am. Jour. Psy., vol. 11, p. 559. 



42 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

is witli great reluctance, and only when reduced to the neces- 
sity by urgent thirst, that they will drink water ; even then 
they invariably suck up the fluid through a piece of fine mus- 
lin. In like manner when they require water for ablution, 
or any unavoidable household purpose, they carefully strain 
it repeatedly before they venture to use it. The most nox- 
ious vermin and insects are also treated with the same con- 
sideration as the most harmless creatures ; and if, through 
persevering annoyance, they are compelled to deprive certain 
odious insects of the asylum usually found upon their per- 
sons, they remove the tormentors with the utmost care, and 
tenderly place them out of harm's way." 1 This is closely 
paralleled by the beliefs and actions of the Doukhobors in 
Canada, who refuse to eat meat, and to own and work with 
animals, etc. ; by the intense pity which some women and 
children have for animals, insects, plants, and even inanimate 
objects, such as locomotives when 'puffing,' "the moon 
when black clouds pass over it," etc. 

Again this sentiment becomes almost pathological among 
vegetarians, and in the nervous and violent crusades against 
vivisection, even of the most humane, painless, and scientific 
kind. 

Fear. 

"Fear is the father of religion, loVe her late-born daugh- 
ter. ' ' In every age and land there have been those who have 
held that fear is the source of all religions. King Solomon 
declared that, ' 'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowl- 
edge," and had he been speaking of the origin of religion 
he would have probably added ' and of religion.' Petronius 
long ago sang, "Fear first made the gods," and in our own 
day, to men tion only a few, D'Alviella, and AlfredMaury, 
from whom we quote the first sentence, regard this sentiment 
as one root of religion of which the other is love. The Italian 
anthropologist, Sergi, offers many ingenious arguments to prove 
that one of the main roots of all religions is irrational fear, due to 
man 's ignorance of natural laws ; and Paul Carus evidently 
agrees with Petronious when he writes, * 'Demonolatry or Devil 
worship is the first stage in the evolution of religion, for we 
fear the bad not the good." 2 

These views are, of course, extreme and partial, like some 

1 Diet, of all Religions. 2 Hist, of the Devil. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 43 

of those concerning love. Nevertheless, it is true that fear 
has played and still plays, in the religion of all peoples, a 
role hardly second to that of any other emotion, and there- 
fore merits the great importance attached to it. If it be true, 
as Dr. Robertson Smith says, that the spirit of many primi- 
tive religions is " predominantly joyous, " it is no less true 
that the spirit of as many more is predominantly timid, and 
in few, if any, is the element of fear entirely absent. Every 
bright god has his shadow, so to say; and under the in- 
fluence of Dualism this shadow attained a distinct existence 
and personality in the popular imagination. 1 

Primitive and ancient peoples have their i kakodaimonai ' 
as well as their « eudaimonai, ' their demons as well as their 
divinities, their Ahrimans as well as their Ormuzds. This 
holds true even of the Jews and Christians. The God of 
these people is at one time, a loving and merciful God, an 
indulgent "Father that pitieth his children;" at another 
time he is jealous and vindictive, a ' consuming fire, ' who 
"visits the sins of the fathers upon the children, even to 
the third and fourth generation." The blessings promised 
to the obedient are indeed great, but the curses heaped upon 
the disobedient are even greater. 2 He has his glorious 
heaven and his burning hell, and Christian and Jew love 
and praise him when he is in his happy mood, and fear and 
dread him when he is in his angry mood. " Rejoice in the 
Lord, praise him with harp : sing unto him with the psaltery 
and an instrument of ten strings, ' ' exhorts the Psalmist ; 
and a few lines further on he says ; ' * Let all the earth fear 
the Lord ; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe 
of him. ' ' This is precisely what most religious people do ; 
they rejoice in the Lord, but they also stand in awe of him. 
The two emotions, love and fear, are correlative and oppo- 
site, just as heat and cold, light and darkness, good and evil, 
etc., and an excess of one expels the other. One of the best 
studies of fear from the point of view of its influence on the 
lives and actions of men, is that of President Hall. 3 

The following summary, taken from his article will, it is 
believed, be of interest to the reader. In reply to his ques- 
tionnaire 1,701 persons answered, describing 6,456 fears, 
which he groups according to the objects feared, as follows : 

1 M. D. Conway: Demonolatry and Folklore, Vol. 1, p. 14. 

2 Cf. Deut. 27, and Lev. 21, et seq. 
s Amer. Jour. Psy., Vol. 8, No. 2. 



44 



Pathological Aspects of Religions. 





Table 1. 




Celestial Phenomena. 




Animals. 




Thunder and lightning, 


603 


Reptiles, 


483 


High wind, 


143 


Domestic animals, 


268 


Cyclones, 


67 


Wild animals, 


206 


Clouds and their forms, 


44 


Insects, 


203 


Meteors, 


34 


Rats and mice, 


196 


Northern lights, 


25 


Cats and dogs, 


79 


Comets, 


18 


Birds, 


51 


Fog, 


16 







Storms, 


14 




1,486 


Eclipses, 


14 






Extreme hot water, 


10 


Fire, 


365 


Extreme cold water, 


8 


Water, 


205 






Drowning, 


57 




996 




627 


Darkness, 


432 






Ghosts, 


203 


Strange persons, 


436 


Dream fears, 


109 


Robbers, 


153 


Solitude, 


55 













589 




799 










Death, 


299 






Disease, 


241 



540 

" This accounts for 5,037 fears, leaving 1,419 directed to 
many scores of objects to be discussed later. It would ap- 
pear that thunderstorms are feared most, that reptiles follow, 
with strangers and darkness as close seconds, while fire, 
death, domestic animals, diseases, wild animals, water, 
ghosts, insects, rats and mice, robbers, high winds, dream 
fears, cats and dogs, cyclones, solitude, drowning, birds, 
etc., represent decreasing degrees of fearfulness. When we 
specify reptiles, domestic animals, insects, birds, the kinds of 
disease, strangers, dream fears, and add miscellaneous fears, 
we have in all 298 objects feared. n 

Here we have 298 objects feared by normal children, liv- 
ing in a relatively highly civilized and organized society, un- 
der the most favorable and protected conditions. The query 
naturally arises, how much larger the catalogue would be, 
and how much more intense the fears of primitive man (an 
adult child) who roamed about the primeval forests almost 
wholly unprotected from the forces of nature, and the ani- 
mals about him, and to whom all natural phenomena ap- 
peared more or less mysterious and therefore terrible ? The 
answer is readily found in the many demonolatries, and the 
countless demons of primitive peoples. Hunger, disease, 
death, dreams, darkness, ghosts, heat, cold, the elements, 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 45 

animals, insects, worms, trees and plants, and even inani- 
mate objects have at one time or another been demonized and 
made the objects of religious worship. 

What fear has meant in religion, even the highest forms of 
it, can be seen from the fact that no less than 518 references 
are made to it in the Old and New Testaments. We shall 
later on speak a little more fully concerning its influence on 
the religions of primitive and ancient peoples. 

Like pity, fear is an emotion which men like Nietzsche, 
Ibsen, Wilde, and others regard as base and slavish. They 
have nothing but contempt for it, and would eliminate it en- 
tirely from the soul of man. But how much smaller our 
lives would be were this done can be seen from President Hall ; s 
study. Indeed, it would be almost as disastrous as the loss 
of one of our faculties. Fear is in a large sense the begin- 
ning of wisdom and prudence. " Never is the child's charm 
in an object, ' ' writes President Hall, ' ' so great as at the moment 
when he is just getting the better of his fear of it. One of 
the chief spurs to knowledge and science is to overcome fear, 
and many of the things now best known are those that used 
to be most feared. To feel a given fear no longer over but 
beneath us gives an exquisite joy of growth. ' ' Fear is the 
result of the experiences of the race, and in a moderate de- 
gree is a means of protection. The pedagogic problem here, 
as with pity and anger, is not to eliminate the emotion, but 
to " gauge it to the power of proper reaction," to learn, in 
the words of Aristotle, ' ' to fear in due proportion those 
things worthy of being feared. ' ' 

Mobbid Fears. 

If, as has been said, the total absence of fear is a deplor- 
able deficiency, an excess of it is still more distressing and 
alienating. We need only mention the following morbid 
fears, and it will at once appear how widespread its baneful 
influence may become. 

Agrophobia, or fear of open spaces ; 

4 ' enclosed spaces ; 



Claustrophobia, 

Clitrophobia, 

Topophobia, 

Astrophobia, 

Anthropophobia, 

Monophobia, 



all spaces or space ; 
lightning ; 
crowds ; 
solitude ; 



46 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

Panphobia, or fear of everything ; 

Misophobia, " " " dirt; 

Vokophobia, ' ' " to return home ; 

Hypsophobia, " " of heights ; 

Botophobia, " " "cellars; 1 

To these we may add Theophobia and Peceatiphobia, the 
fear of God and the fear of sinning, which become genuine 
obsessions among very many religionists. 

The cultured modern attributes his pleasures and suc- 
cesses, his sufferings and reverses, to natural causes, even 
though he be unable to say what these causes are. But 
this is by no means true of all moderns. The late assassi- 
nation of our president, for instance, the Galveston flood, 
Baltimore fire, the Iroquois and Slocum disasters, and all na- 
tional calamities are still looked upon by the masses as the 
punishments of God for national or local sins. Now this is 
precisely the belief of primitive, barbarous, and uncivilized 
men the world over. To them natural causes, in the scien- 
tific sense of the word, are, of course, unknown, — the joys 
of life spring from the blessings of a benevolent god, its mis- 
fortunes from curses of an angry deity who has been neglected 
or sinned against, or else the work of a demon who takes a 
fiendish delight in the sufferings of man. It is not surpris- 
ing, therefore, to find that the peoples whose environments 
were unfavorable, and whose struggle for existence was 
therefore especially severe, should have centered their thoughts 
upon the evil side of their deities, or upon deities wholly evil, 
and exhausted their intellectual resources in endeavoring to 
propitiate them and gain their favor. 

Again, whenever a people have strayed for a long time 
from the straight and narrow path of religion and morality, 
there is always an Elijah, who in thundering words com- 
mands them to halt ere they fall headlong into the yawning 
pits of hell ; who wakes them to a lively realization of their 
sinful and dangerous condition, points the way back, and if 
needs be lashes and frightens them into it. These Elijahs, 
however, are the children of the people, the products of the 
needs of their respective times. The well-known law, action 
equals reaction in the opposite direction, is as true in the 
psychical realm as in the physical. The algedonic pendulum 
swings from pleasure to pain, from joy to sorrow, from cour- 

1 Kovalewsky : Folie du doute. Jour. Mental Science, 1887. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 47 

age to fear, and the higher it rises in one direction, the higher 
will it afterwards rise in the opposite direction. Indeed, this 
is true of all human life, as is so much evidenced by the his- 
tory of nations. We need only recall the golden ages of 
Egypt, Judea, Greece and Rome, the dark ages which fol- 
lowed them, and then the Renaissance, upon whose crest we 
now ride, in order to see the above law of psychic rhythm in 
action. 

In the light of these facts we shall be the better able to 
understand the Great Awakening of 1740 which* spread over 
New England, the Kentucky Revival, the demonolatries of 
primitive peoples, sacrifices, etc. 

The Great Awakening. 

When we remember the early history of the Puritans, the 
land they settled in, its barren and rocky soil, with "sky over- 
cast and weather none too clement, the forests gloomy and 
unexplored, and Indians with their tomahawks, bows and 
arrows, and wild warwhoops lurking everywhere, we see at 
once that they had passed through a period of terrible * sturm 
und drang ' in which the attention had been preoccupied 
almost exclusively with immediate problems and religious 
matters largely neglected. Later, when the Indians had been 
conquered, the forests cleared, the soil cultivated and the vil- 
lages built, when comfort and leisure were common posses- 
sions a violent reaction took place ; men began to reflect upon 
the loose and sinful lives they had been leading, were greatly 
concerned with the sad state of their souls, and the possibility 
of being severely punished for their wickedness. This re- 
action or conversion, significantly designated The Great 
Awakening, was ushered in by Jonathan Edwards and con- 
tinued by Whitefield, Wheelock, Parsons, Bellamy, Daven- 
port, and others. The process of conversion, though normal, 
healthy, and almost imperceptible, when the previous life 
has been orderly and under proper control, is not so when 
the previous life has undergone a severe strain, or has been 
loose and sinful. Such lives need general overhauling and 
cleaning, and heroic measures must be resorted to. How- 
ever, religious enthusiasts are too apt to overestimate the cor- 
ruption and sinfulness of the people, and their unjustifiably 
strenuous methods are productive of the worst evils, espe- 
cially among those of weak mental or physical constitutions, 



48 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

who need hope, and comfort, and sympathy, instead of anger, 
reproach and terrifying sermons. " I would say, once for all, ' ' 
writes Dr. Clouston, ' ' about unusual religious services, ex- 
citing preaching, and * revival meetings, ' that, as a physician, 
I have no objection to them at all, rather the contrary, but I 
think they are only suited to stolid, healthy brains, and should 
on no account be attended by persons with weak heads, 
excitable dispositions, and neurotic constitutions. J ' 1 

But such people are to be found in every crowd, audience, 
and congregation, and therefore ministers should especially 
be careful not to play too strongly upon the emotions of their 
hearers ; for religion, as has been said, is an all-absorbing 
topic with many people ; its principles lie deep imbedded in 
their hearts and brains, and influence their lives from the 
cradle almost to the grave. 

The very titles of many of the sermons preached during 
the Awakening such, for example, as "Sinners in the hands 
of an angry God," "Wrath upon the wicked to the utter- 
most," "The Eternity of Hell Torments," "The future 
punishment of the wicked unavoidable and intolerable, " etc., 
are sufficiently indicative of their contents, and the effects 
produced upon the hearers may readily be imagined. 

Never before were the wrath of God and torments of hell 
painted in such lurid and flaming colors, not even by Dante 
or Milton, and it is not surprising, therefore, to read that 
strong men and women, and, worst of all, little children, 
were literally frightened out of their wits. 

A little child, after hearing Whitefield preach, took sick, 
and saying it would go to Mr. Whitefield 's God, died in a 
short time. "This, " says Whitefield, " encouraged me to 
speak to the little ones. But O, how were the old people 
affected when I said, "Little children, if your parents will 
not come to Christ, do you come and go to heaven without 
them. There seemed to be but few dry eyes, look where I 
would. I have not seen a greater commotion since my 
preaching at Boston. ' ' 2 

Indeed, these preachers considered their efforts a failure if 
they could not cause weeping, shrieking, crying, wailing, 
fainting, and convulsive fits to be seen and heard in every 
corner. 

Chauncy, in his "Seasonable Thoughts upon the state of 

1 Mental Diseases, p. 45. 

2 Quoted in Tracy, " The Great Awakening, 11 p. 95. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 49 

Religion in New England," writes, "An account of Mr. 
Davenport's preaching . . . a gentleman in Connecticut 
wrote to one of the ministers of this town, upon his own 
knowledge, in these words: 'At length he turned his dis- 
course to others and with the utmost strength of his lungs 
addressed himself to the congregation under these and such- 
like expressions, viz. : You poor unconverted creatures in 
the seats, in the pews, in the galleries, I wonder you don't 
drop into Hell ! It would not surprise me. I should not 
wonder at it, if I should see you drop down this minute into 
Hell. You Pharisees, hypocrites ; now, now, now you are 
going right into the bottom of Hell ! I wonder you don't 
drop into Hell by scores and hundreds,' etc. And in this 
manner he ended the sermon ! . After a short prayer 

he called for all the distressed persons (which were near 
twenty) into the foremost seats. Then he came out of the 
pulpit and stripped off his upper garments and got up into 
the seats and leaped up and down some times and clapped 
his hands together and cried out in these words : ' The war 
goes on, the fight goes on, the Devil goes down, the Devil 
goes down; ' and then betook himself to stamping and 
screaming most dreadfully. And what is it more than might 
be expected to see people so affrighted as to fall into shrieks 
and fits under such methods as these ? ' " 

Happily, he was arrested, adjudged insane, and prevented 
from continuing his shameful performances. Such sermons 
and emotional disorders, however, became the fashion of the 
day, and we find ' ' men of all occupations who are vain enough 
to think themselves fit to be teachers of others," "of no 
learning" and " small capacities," "babes in age as well as 
in understanding," " chiefly young persons, sometimes lads 
or rather boys — nay women and girls " — even "negroes " 
travelling through the colonies spreading gloom, despair, and 
melancholy wherever they went, and exhorting the people to 
4 ' press into the Kingdom, ' ' to force God, so to speak, to admit 
them into Paradise. The following from the Boston Post- 
Boy, No. 301, will illustrate their methods: "Their main 
design in preaching seems not so much to inform men's judg- 
ments, as to terrify and affright their imaginations : by awful 
words and frightful representations to set the congregation 
into hideous shrieks and outcries. And to this end, and in 
every place where they come, they represent that God is 
doing extraordinary things in other places, and that they are 



50 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

some of the last hardened wretches that stand out ; that this 
is the last call that ever they are likely to hear ; that they are 
now hanging over the pit of destruction, and just ready this 
moment to fall into it ; that hell fire now flashes into their 
faces, and that the devil now stands ready to sieze upon 
them and carry them to hell ; and that they will oftentimes 
repeat the awful words « Damned ! Damned ! Damned ! ' 
three or four times over." x 

The reader will pardon another quotation from Tracy's 
' « The Great Awakening, ' ' a work full of accounts of the 
tireless efforts of a band of sincere, but deluded men, to 
shatter the minds and hearts of men in order to bring them 
to God. 

Rev. Jonathan Parsons describes the effects which one of 
his sermons produced on his hearers. "Under this sermon, 
many had their countenances changed ; their thoughts seemed 
to trouble them, so that the joints of their loins were loosed, 
and their knees smote one against another. Great numbers 
cried out aloud in the anguish of their souls. Several stout 
men fell as though a cannon had been discharged, and a ball 
had made its way through their hearts. Some young women 
were thrown into hysteric fits. The sight and noise of lamen- 
tations seemed a little resemblance of what we may imagine 
will be when the great Judge pronounces the tremendous 
sentence of 'go, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.' There 
were so many in distress, that I could not get a particular 
knowledge of the special reasons at that time, only as I heard 
them crying, ' Woe is me ! What must I do ? ' and such sort 
of short sentences with bitter accents." 2 

The above work must be read through in order to gain an 
adequate conception of the frequency with which such ser- 
mons were preached, and the wide extent of their baneful 
influence. 

Even in our own day we are told that, "When Mr. Moody 
was holding his meetings in Manchester, he found a popular 
feeling strong enough to support his wildest utterances. The 
crowd seemed to gloat on his horrors to an extent which en- 
couraged him in his strange extravagances. He had heard 
of a lady who had prevented her daughter from going to his 
enquiry meeting, and to a vast crowd in Free Trade Hall he 
depicted that lady and her daughter in hell undergoing pun- 

1 Quoted by S. P. Hayes: Amer. Jour. Psy., Vol. 13, No. 4. 

2 P. 138. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 51 

ishments so foul and frightful — depicted this in such gross 
and vulgar language — that none but an audience paralyzed 
by superstition would have tolerated it for a moment. ' ' 3 

It is pleasing to note that when Alexander Dowie or Elijah 
III fired a volley of billingsgate at his audience in Madison 
Square Garden recently, he was hooted and jeered, and finally 
forced to leave the platform. 

It is hardly necessary to remark that many of the above 
phenomena are due to the subtle influences of imitation, sug- 
gestion, hypnotism, emotional contagion, etc., which are 
always at play in a psychological crowd, and which rob the 
individuals of their rational control over themselves and re- 
duce them to the level of the lower animals whose acts are 
instinctive and reflexive. 2 Some one suddenly cries out, 
throws up his hands, or falls down in a fit, then others of a 
neurotic temperament become infected, and soon the whole 
congregation is thrown into a terrible confusion. We shall 
see many cases of this in the 

Kentucky Revival. \ 

Still more pathological were the phenomena which at- 
tended the great revival which spread with lightning-like 
rapidity over Kentucky, Tennessee, and adjoining States in 
1800. The conditions here in the pioneer days were most 
primitive and immoral, and the region was aptly called 
« Satan's stronghold.' Men lived with their wives and chil- 
dren in log cabins constructed in a day, and spent most of 
their time drinking, gambling, duelling, brutal fighting, 
gouging, and in other vicious pastimes. ' ' 'A Kentuc ' in 
1800 had much the same meaning that a " cowboy" has now. 
He was the most reckless, fearless, law- despising of men. A 
common description of him was "half horse, half alligator, 
tipped with snapping-turtle." Suddenly these same people 
underwent a marvellous and unparalled moral regeneration. 

The following is a brief and interesting account of this re- 
markable revival. ' ' Two young men began the great work 
in the summer of 1799. They were brothers, preachers, and 
on their way across the pine barrens to Ohio, but turned 
aside to be present at a sacramental solemnity on Red River. 
The people were accustomed to gather at such times on a 

1 M. D. Conway: Idols and Ideals, p. 33. 

2 See Davenport: Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, passim. 



52 Pathological Aspects of Religions, 

Friday, and, by praying, singing, and hearing sermons, pre- 
pare themselves for the reception of the sacrament on Sun- 
day. At the Red River meeting the brothers were asked to 
preach, and one did so with astonishing fervor. As he spoke, 
the people were deeply moved, tears ran streaming down 
their faces, and one, a woman far in the rear of the house, 
broke through order and began to shout. For two hours after 
the regular preachers had gone the crowd lingered, and were 
loath to depart. While they tarried, one of the brothers was 
irresistibly impelled to speak. He rose and told them that 
he felt called to preach ; that he could not be silent. The 
words which then fell from his lips roused the people before 
him " to a pungent sense of sin." Again and again the woman 
shouted, and would not be silent, He started to go to her. 
The crowd begged him to turnback. Something within him 
urged him on, and he went through the house shouting and 
exhorting and praising God. In a moment the floor, to use 
his own words, " was covered with the slain. " Their cries 
for mercy were terrible to hear. Some found forgiveness, 
but many went away ' ' spiritually wounded ' ' and suffering 
unutterable agony of soul. 

Nothing could allay the excitement. Every settlement 
along the Green River and the Cumberland was full of reli- 
gious fervor. Men fitted their wagons with beds and provi- 
sions, and travelled fifty miles to camp upon the ground and 
hear him preach. The idea was new; hundreds adopted it, 
and camp-meetings began. There was now no longer any 
excuse to stay away from preaching. Neither distance, nor 
lack of houses, nor scarcity of food, nor daily occupations 
prevailed. Led by curiosity, by excitement, by religious zeal, 
families of every Protestant denomination — Baptist, Metho- 
dists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians — hurried to the camp- 
ground. Crops were left half gathered ; every kind of work 
was left undone ; cabins were deserted ; in large settlements 
there did not remain one soul. The first regular general 
camp-meeting was held at the Gasper River Church, in July, 
1800 ; but the rage spread, and a dozen encampments fol- 
lowed in quick succession. Camp-meeting was always in the 
forest near some little church, which served as the preacher's 
lodge. At one end of a clearing was a rude stage, and be- 
fore it the stumps and trunks of hewn trees, on which the 
listeners sat. About the clearing were the tents and wagons 
ranged in rows like streets. The praying, the preaching, the 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 53 

exhorting would sometimes last for seven days, and be pro- 
longed every day until darkness had begun to give way to 
light. Nor were the ministers the only exhortors. Men and 
women, nay, even children, took part. At Cane Ridge a 
little girl of seven sat upon the shoulder of a man and 
preached to the multitude till she sank exhausted on the 
bearer's head. At Indian Creek a lad of twelve mounted a 
stump and exhorted till he grew weak, whereupon two men 
upheld him, and he continued until speech was impossible. 
A score of sinners fell prostrate before him. 

At no time was the ' ' falling exercise ' ' so prevalent as at 
night. Nothing was then wanting that could strike terror 
into minds weak, timid, and harassed. The red glare of the 
camp-fires reflected from hundreds of tents and wagons ; the 
dense blackness of the flickering shadows, the darkness of 
the surrounding forest, made still more terrible by the groans 
and screams of the " spiritually wounded, " who had fled to 
it for comfort ; the entreaty of the preachers ; the sobs and 
shrieks of the downcast still walking through the dark valley 
of the Shadow of Death ; the shouts and songs of praise from 
the happy ones who had crossed the delectable Mountains, 
had gone on through the fogs of the Enchanted Ground and 
entered the land of Beulah, were too much for those over 
whose minds and bodies lively imaginations held full sway. 
The heart swelled, the nerves gave way, the hands and feet 
grew cold and, motionless and speechless, they fell headlong 
to the ground. In a moment crowds gathered about them 
to pray and shout. Some lay still as death. Some passed 
through frightful twitchings of face and limb. At Cabin 
Creek so many fell that, lest the multitude should tread on 
them, they were carried to the meeting-house and laid in rows 
on the floor. At Cane Ridge the number was three thousand. 
. . . Every road that led to the ground is described to have 
presented for several days an almost unbroken line of wagons, 
horses, and men. . . . It is estimated that twenty thousand 
encamped at the Cane Ridge meeting. The excitement sur- 
passed anything that had been known. Men who came to 
scoff remained to preach. All day and all night the crowd 
swarmed to and fro from preacher to preacher singing, shout- 
ing, laughing, now rushing off to some new exhorter who 
had climbed upon a stump, now gathering around some un- 
fortunate who, in their peculiar language, was "spiritually 
slain. " Soon men and women fell in such numbers that it 



54 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

became impossible for the multitude to move about without 
trampling them, and they were hurried to the meeting-house. 
At no time was the floor less than half covered. Some talked, 
but could not move. Some beat the floor with their heels. 
Some, shrieking in agony, bounded about, it is said, like a 
live fish out of water. Many lay down and rolled over and 
over for hours at a time. Others rushed wildly over the 
stumps and benches, and then plunged, shouting, Lost! 
Lost ! into the forest. 

As the meetings grew more and more frequent, this ner- 
vous excitement assumed new and more terrible forms. One 
was known as jerking ; another as the barking exercise ; a 
third, as the Holy Laugh. « « The jerks ' ' began in the head 
and spread rapidly to the feet. The head would be thrown 
from side to side so swiftly that the features would be blotted 
out and the hair made to snap. When the body was affected, 
the sufferer was hurled over hindrances that came in his way, 
and finally dashed on the ground to bounce about like a ball. 
At camp-meeting in the far South, saplings were cut off 
breast-high and left "for the people to jerk by." One who 
visited such a camp-ground declares that about the roots of 
from fifty to one hundred saplings the earth was kicked up 
" as by a horse stamping flies. " . . . . The community 
seemed demented. From the nerves and muscles the dis- 
order passed to the mind. Men dreamed dreams and saw 
visions, nay, fancied themselves dogs, went down on all 
fours, and barked till they grew hoarse. It was no uncommon 
sight to behold numbers of them gathered about a tree, bark- 
ing, yelping, « ' treeing the devil. ' ' Two years later, when 
much of the excitement of the great revival had gone down, 
falling and jerking gave way to hysterics. During the most 
earnest preaching and exhorting, even sincere professors of 
religion would, on a sudden, burst into loud laughter ; others, 
unable to resist, would follow, and soon the assembled mul- 
titude would join in. This was the " Holy Laugh, ' ' and be- 
came, after 1803, a recognized part of worship.' ' 1 

Strikingly close parallels to these cases are to be found in 
missionary reports of conversion to Christianity among primi- 
tive and non-Christian peoples. Bishop Calloway 2 describes 
violent attacks suffered by the negroes in Natal after their 

JMcMaster: Hist, of the People of U. S., Vol. 2, pp. 578-582. 
2 Jour. Anthrop. Soc, Vol. 1, p. 171. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 55 

conversion; Brough Smith 1 describes similar attacks among 
native Australian converts; Rev. Nevius 2 those of Chinese 
converts; and James Mooney 3 those of the Sioux Indians 
during their Ghost Dance outbreak in 1890. 

Jumpers. 

Jumping is a characteristic of several extravagant religious 
sects. About 1740 a religious sect known as the Jumpers 
arose in Wales. Their performances resembled closely an 
Indian Ghost Dance. The following is an account of their 
method of worship. "After the preaching was over any one 
who pleased gave out a verse of a hymn, and this they sung 
over and over again with all their might and main, thirty or 
forty times, till some of them worked themselves into a sort 
of drunkenness or madness ; they were then violently agitated 
and leaped up and down in all manner of postures, frequently 
for hours together. ' ' A similar sect known as Shakers arose 
in England about 1750. The founder and chief prophetess 
of this sect was 'Mother ' Ann Lee, who was regarded by her 
followers as the reincarnation of Christ. Their services were 
described by one of their own number as follows : ''Some- 
times after sitting awhile in silent meditation they were 
seized with a mighty trembling, under which they would 
often express the indignation of God against all sin. At 
other times they were exercised with singing, shouting, and 
leaping for joy at the near prospect of salvation. They were 
often exercised with great agitation of the body and limbs, 
shaking, running, and walking the floor, with a variety of 
other operations and signs, swiftly passing and repassing 
each other like clouds agitated with a mighty wind. ' ' 4 

Under the influence of Wesley and Whitefield all sorts of 
hysterical and convulsive phenomena like those which ob- 
tained in the New England and Kentucky revivals were seen at 
the meetings of the early English Methodists. 5 About twenty- 
five years ago there appeared in Russia a new religious sect 
which received the name Prygouny or Jumpers. Their prin- 
cipal dogma was that the Holy Spirit descends upon the be- 
lievers. The Holy Spirit, however, does not descend on all, 

1 The Aborigines of Victoria, Vol. 1, p. 466. , 

2 Demon Possession, passim. 

3 Bureau of Ethnology, 14th Annual Report, 1890. 

4 Jas. Mooney : op. cit. 

5 See Davenport : Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, pp. 133-179. 



56 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

for in each assembly there are only two or three who are so 
favored. The visible signs of His presence are, first of all, 
an extraordinary paleness of the face, an accelerated respi- 
ration, then a rocking of the whole body. As soon as this is 
noticed the worshippers begin to stamp in time, going in a 
direction opposite to the course of the sun ; then jumping and 
terrible contortions begin and continue until they finally fall 
exhausted upon the ground. 1 

Several Islamic sects among whom such practices obtain 
have been described by M. Zambaco, 2 but these, as well as 
the few immediately preceding, do not properly belong under 
the caption of Fear. 

The Conversion of Children. 

Far more unhappy and culpable are the attempts to 
frighten children into accepting a religion for which their 
years and reason are far too unripe. It is as impossible for 
mere infants, so to speak, to grasp and understand the truths 
of the most highly developed religion, as it is for them to 
understand the truths of science, and any attempt to force 
or coax them to do so are, to say the very least, unpedagogic 
and absurd. As well attempt to make them think the 
thoughts and wear the clothes of adults. "The mind grows 
as the body does, " said Aristotle, "by taking proper nour- 
ishment, not by being stretched on the rack. ' ' The child, 
in its development, hastily recapitulates that of the race, it 
is true, but it cannot do so at one bound. There are untold 
centuries between the lowest and highest forms of religion. 
At first, the child will, perhaps, be an animist and fetichist, 
then, perhaps, a polytheist, then a deist, and only in the 
later years of adolescence has he attained the mental and 
moral development sufficient to assimilate and appreciate 
modern Christianity. 3 

It is much to be regretted, therefore, that attempts, like 
those of Rev. E. Pay son Hammond, the 'Children's Evan- 
gelist,' to force Edwardian Christianity into the minds and 
hearts of little children, are not only permitted but endorsed 
and lauded by many ministers throughout the land. We 
venture to say that no individual in recent times has under- 

1 Tsakni: La Russie Sectaire, pp. 118-135. 

2 Des Exaltations Religieuses en Orient, Progress Med., Paris, 1884. 

3 See Jean du Buy: Stages of Religious Development, Amer. Jour, of 
Religious Psy. and Ed., May, 1904. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 57 

mined the mental and physical health of more children than 
has this so-called servant of God. 

A few quotations from his writings must suffice to show 
the nature of his work and its results. "When I spoke to 
you last, ' ' writes a little girl, "I could not say Jesus is 
mine ; and I cannot yet. I attended the inquiry meeting last 
Sunday, and three ladies talked to me. By-and-by a little 
girl came and asked me if I had found Jesus. I could not 
answer her, for I began to weep. 

4 * Oh, Mr. Hammond, I am so unhappy ! I have tried to find 
Jesus, but I cannot. Please pray for me that I may soon be 
happy, working for Jesus. From your loving little friend, 

"Rosa." 1 

This is one of many hundred similar letters which Rev. 
Hammond boasts he has received. 

4 * I began to talk to this little girl who had been engaged 
in prayer," writes Rev. Dr. Alexander, Hammond's co- 
laborer, « ' and I said to her, after I had reassured her a 
little, ' Well now, I heard you thanking God for pardoning 
your sins, and for the peace of mind you have ; I suppose 
you feel that you have been converted.' And she said, 4 Yes 
sir,' with great quietness, and great assurance of mind. I 
said, * Now how did that come to pass ? You did not always 
think of these things.' ' Oh no ! ' she said, * I never cared 
about them at all.' 'Well,' I said, 'just tell me how it 
came to pass that you did come to care about them.' She 
said, « I came to the meetings, and attended them for awhile ; 
but I did not care much about what was going on. One 
night I went, with some others, into a room. There were a 
good many women there, and some of them were greetin' 
about their sins. A lady was present who spoke to them, 
told them about their sins, and told them how they were to 
get pardon ; and, ' she added, in her simple sort of way, 
4 the thought just came into my mind that I was a sinner 
too.' I said, 'And did you go away with that thought?' 
4 Yes,' she replied. I said, 4 Did that grieve you ? ' Look- 
ing up in my face with a most earnest and striking expres- 
sion, she said, 4 Eh, sir, I was in an awfu' way.' In this 
state she continued, she said, for a good while. I asked, 
4 How did you find peace of mind ? ' 4 Oh, sir, ' she replied, 
4 it was something that Mr. Hammond said when he was 

1 Early Conversion, p. 120. 



58 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

preaching. ' I asked, ' What gave you peace of mind ? ' 
Turning on me again the same intense and earnest look, she 
exclaimed, ' Oh, there is nothing can give peace of mind to 
the sinner but the blood that was shed on Calvary.' . . . 
I may just mention, that as this talk was going on, there was 
a little boy in the corner of the room, so little a fellow that 
he had just emerged from the condition of petticoats, and had 
not reached the dignity of a jacket; his whole costume being 
in one piece from his neck to the heels. He was standing in 
the corner of the room and sobbing very hard. The only 
idea that came into my mind was that the little fellow was 
sleepy, and that he wanted to go home, as it was now about 
ten o'clock. I said to one of the little girls that he was 
wearied, and that some one had better take him home. She 
said, ' Oh, no, sir ; he is not weary, he is greetin' about his 
sins.' I went to the little fellow, and I spoke to him ; how- 
ever, he was really past speaking to. He was in a state of 
great distress, whatever was the cause. I said to one of the 
girls, ' Perhaps you could speak to him better than I could ; ' 
and she replied, ' Well, yes, sir; I will speak to him, but he 
does not belong to this place.' I said, 'Indeed!' 'No, 
puir fellow ; he has walked all the way frae Prestonpans to- 
night.' Now this was a dark, wintry night, and yet this 
little creature had walked, by himself, about four miles, to 
get to the meeting. I asked about him the last time I was 
out. This little girl told me that she believed he was going 
on in the right way." x Again, "A few days ago I found a 
little boy about eight years of age, in one of these seats at 
the children's inquiry meeting, sobbing aloud. Said I, 
4 What's the matter, my dear little fellow?' 'Oh, dear! 
I'm lost ! I'm lost ! and I can't find Jesus ! O ! my wicked 
heart ! How can I get a new heart ? I have been so wicked ! 
I have never loved Jesus at all ! I thought I loved Him, 
but I know I never did. Will He take me ? ' " 2 

It is fear, which, perhaps more than anything else, has led 
men to build altars, offer sacrifices, and worship fetiches, or 
objects believed to have the power of placating the spirits 
and warding off evil. 

Oldenfield, writing of the Aborigines of Australia says, 
' ' The number of supernatural beings feared if not loved, that 
they acknowledge is exceedingly great ; for not only are the 

1 The Conversion of Children, pp. 8-9. 2 Ibid., p. 76. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion, 59 

heavens peopled with such, but the whole face of the coun- 
try swarms with them ; every thicket, most watering places 
and all rocky places abound with evil spirits. In like man- 
ner, every natural phenomenon is believed to be the work of 
demons, none of which seem of a benign nature, one and all 
apparently striving to do all imaginable mischief to the poor 
black fellow." 1 

The following prayer of the Madagascans is interesting : 

" O Zamhor ! to thee we offer no prayers. The good god 
needs no asking. But we must pray to Nyang. Nyang must 
be appeased. O Nyang, bad and strong spirit, let not the 
thunder roar over our heads ! Tell the sea to keep within its 
bounds ! Spare, O Nyang, the ripening fruit, and dry not up 
the blossoming rice ! Let not our women bring forth children 
on the accursed days. Thou reignest, and this thou knowest, 
over the wicked ; and great is their number, O Nyang, tor- 
ment not, then, any longer the good folk ! " 2 

A century ago Kien Lung, Emperor of China, made the 
following vow to one of the Fire-gods of Peking, who was 
believed to have been the cause of the destruction by fire of 
his most favorite building, the Hall of Contemplation : 

" O Fire-god, thou hast been wroth with me in that I have 
built me palaces, and left thy shrine unhonored and in ruins. 
Here I do vow to build thee a temple surpassed by none other 
of the Fire-gods in Peking ; but I shall expect thee in the 
future not to meddle with my palaces.' ' 3 

Plant and animal sacrifices were offered by all ancient, 
savage and civilized peoples. But when calamities were 
threatening, such gifts were not deemed sufficiently great for 
the malignant gods. They demanded the very best that man 
could offer, namely, human flesh and blood, the sons and 
daughters of kings and princes, innocent babes and virgins, 
or at least slaves and captives taken in war. This brings us 
to a consideration of the most revolting and sanguinary deeds 
ever perpetrated by human beings. 

Human Sacrifices. 

It is difficult to believe that such an unnatural and perni- 
cious practice was almost universal in its scope, and yet, that 
such was the case will be seen from the following citations. 

1 Trans. Eth. Soc, Vol. 3, p. 228. 

2 Reville: The Devil, p. 6. 3 M. D. Conway: Idols and Ideals, p. 73. 



60 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

The ancient Egyptian kings offered human sacrifices at the 
tomb of Osiris. In the temple at Heliopolis, three human 
beings were daily burnt, according to Manethon, as a sacri- 
fice to Typhon, until the reign of Amasis. In Phoenicia, 
when the people suffered great calamities from war, or pesti- 
lence, or drought, they chose by public vote the one most 
dear to them and sacrificed him to Saturn. A similar cus- 
tom prevailed among the Rhodians, Curetes, Carthaginians, 
and the Sardi, according to Suidas. The Carthaginians, 
Klitarch tells us, carried this brutal custom to such an ex- 
treme that those who were childless bought children of their 
poor neighbors for the purpose of sacrificing them. Like- 
wise, Diodorus, in narrating the expedition of Agathocles 
against the Carthaginians says, " They gave just cause like- 
wise to their god Saturn to be their enemy; for in former 
times they used to sacrifice to this god the sons of the most 
eminent persons, but of late times they secretly bought and 
bred up children for that purpose ; and upon strict search 
being made, there were found, amongst them that were to be 
sacrificed, some children that had been changed and put in 
the place of others. Weighing these things in their minds, 
and now seeing that the enemy lay before their walls, they 
were seized with such a pang of superstition, as if they had 
utterly forsaken the religion of their fathers. That they 
might therefore without delay reform what was amiss, they 
offered as a public sacrifice 200 of the sons of the nobility, 
and no fewer than 300 more (who were liable to censure) 
voluntarily offered themselves up ; for among the Carthagin- 
ians there was a brazen statue of Saturn, putting forth the 
palms of his hands bending in such a manner towards the 
earth, as the boy who was laid upon them in order to be sac- 
rificed, should slip off and so fall down headlong into a deep 
fiery furnace.' ' 

There is the testimony of both Herodotus and Photius that 
the Persians practiced human sacrifice, and buried men, 
women, and children to appease the wrath of Mithra. 

The Arabs, as late as Mohammed's time, sacrificed a nurs- 
ling every seventh day to Moloch, and every Thursday to 
Jupiter. Mohammed states that his father was doomed to 
be sacrificed but purchased his ransom with 100 camels. 
Burying alive was also quite a common practice among them. 

At the time of the migration of the Israelites from Egypt 
(circa, 1320 B. c.) all of the tribes occupying the land of 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 61 

Canaan, as well as the Amalekites, Midianites, and Moabites, 
whose territories they traversed, were worshippers of the sun- 
god in some of his forms. And whether their tribal god was 
appealed to as Baal, Chemosh, Milcolm, Ashtoreth or Moloch, 
it was the same deity only under a different aspect. 

The sun was a source of light, and warmth, and life, and 
all good, but not always was the sun a beneficent, life-giving 
deity, whose genial beams fructified the receptive earth, and 
nourished and sustained all animate nature. At times he 
became jealous and angry, and then he was a cruel and 
bloodthirsty monster, whose fierce heat withered the fruits 
and grain, drank up the water in the rivers and fountains, 
consumed the blood in the veins of man and beast, and spread 
famine and pestilence throughout the whole land. Then in- 
stead of being worshipped with offerings of fruits and flowers, 
and festive songs and dances, his altars were glutted with the 
blood of human victims poured out to appease his anger. 
Instances of human sacrifices among the Canaanites, and many 
others, are very frequently mentioned in the Old Testament. 1 

In 2 Kings 3 : 26-27, we have a case of vicarious sacrifice, 
a practice common among many primitive and ancient peo- 
ples, and of which, according to Christian belief, Christ was 
the greatest victim. Moses proffered his life for the Israel- 
ites ; David delivered the sons of Saul to be sacrificed for the 
sins of their father, and during Titus's siege of Jerusalem, a 
distinguished Jewess, according to Josephus, slaughtered her 
own child as a sacrifice. In the Cabalistic work « Sonar,' it 
is written that the death of an innocent atones for the sins of 
the world, and even Origen believed that in times of a 
national calamity, the voluntary death of a pious man could 
appease the divinity. 

In Exod. 32 : 27-29, God himself commands Moses to 
order a general slaughter among Israel, and as a result, three 
thousand men fell in one day. Again, in Num. 25 : 4, 5, we 
read : i 'And the Lord said unto Moses, Take all the heads 
of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the 
sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away 
from Israel." 

When Joshua sacked Jericho he « * utterly destroyed all 
that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, 
and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword. ' ' 

1 Lev. 18 : 21 ; 20: 2-5 . Dent. 12 : 31. 



62 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

Only after he had stoned Achan was * ' the Lord turned from 
the fierceness of his anger. ' ' 

Samuel, after rebuking Saul for his disobedience and hu- 
maneness, "hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in 
Gilgal." 

Jephthah sacrificed his daughter because of a rash vow 
made to God. Manasseh made his sons pass through the 
fire, and in (Ps. 106 : 37-38,) and (Jer. 7 : 31,) we are told 
that the children of Israel sacrificed their sons and daughters 
unto the heathen gods. 

These instances will suffice to show that offering human 
sacrifices was by no means unknown to the ancient Jews. 

When we come to the Greeks and Romans we find the 
same thing true of them. At the obsequies of Patroclus, 
Achilles sacrificed horses, oxen, sheep, dogs, and human 
beings to the manes of the deceased. 1 Idomeneus, king of 
Crete, sacrificed his son ; and Agamemnon, to appease the 
anger of the wrathful Artemis, attempted to sacrifice his 
daughter, Tphigenia. Polyxena, daughter of King Priam, 
was sacrificed to appease the wrathful shade of Achilles, 2 as 
were the two daughters of Orion, king of Thebes, to avert 
the anger of their god, and stop the ravages of a plague that 
was devastating his city. 3 Human sacrifices were frequently 
offered to Dionysius in Chios, Lesbos, Tenedos, Arcadia, and 
Boetia. Herodotus relates, that Menelaus, after he had 
brought Helen safely home, sacrificed two native boys to the 
favorable wind. Aristodemus, king of the Messinians, sac- 
rificed 300 men to Zeus. In Athens and other cities pau- 
pers and culprits were fattened, and then slaughtered as 
expiatory sacrifices. Among the Romans this brutal prac- 
tice was in use from the earliest times until long after the 
Christian era. After the disastrous battle of Cumae (B.C. 
216) by authority of the sacred books, a Greek man and 
woman, and a man and woman of Gaul, were sacrificed in 
the market place at Rome to appease the anger of the gods. 4 

The Tarquinians slaughtered three hundred Roman cap- 
tives as a sacrifice. In Latium, Saturn was honored with 
human sacrifices. According to Sallust, Cataline and his 
conspirators sacrificed and ate a youth and drank his blood 

i Iliad, Bk. 23, 205 ft. 
2 Ovid : Metamorphosis, Bk. 23, 439. 
8 Ovid : Metamorphosis, Bk. 12, 487 ft. 
*Livy: Bk. 23, ch. 51. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 63 

with wine in order to strengthen their oath. Herodotus tells 
of a similar practice among the Lydians, Medes, and Baby- 
lonians ; and Tacitus among the Armenians. Pliny records 
that in the year of the city 657 (B. C. 97) a decree forbid- 
ding human sacrifice was passed by the Senate ; from which 
time the practice ceased in public, and for some time alto- 
gether. 1 According to Macrobius, human sacrifices were 
offered at Rome down to the time of Brutus (B. C. 44), who 
abolished them upon the establishment of the republic. But 
long after this time the rite was resorted to in exceptional 
cases to propitiate the gods ; for it is an historic fact that in 
the time of Augustus, 100 knights were sacrificed by his 
orders at Perusia; and as late as A. D. 270 a similar immola- 
tion occurred in the time of the Emperor Aurelian. Nero, 
frightened by a comet, offered human sacrifices. Heliogabal 
had the children of the most distinguished families in all Italy 
gathered together in order to sacrifice them in the Syrian 
Mysteries ; and the Church-Fathers assure us that human 
sacrifices were offered at Rome to Jupiter latialis in the 4th 
cent. A. D. The ancient Germans, Gauls, the Dacians, 
Scythians, Caledonians, Celts, Goths, the ancient Prussians, 
and others, — all, according to the best authorities, propi- 
tiated their angry gods in the same sanguinary manner. 2 

In some parts of India, the custom has survived almost 
to our own day. Among the Khonds of Orissa, one of the 
ancient kingdoms of Hindustan, human sacrifices were con- 
stantly practiced up to the year 1836, when the attention of 
the British government, having been directed to it by one of 
its agents, took the most strenuous means to break it up. 3 

In 1866, the press reported a terrible public sacrifice in 
Dahomey in which the king had 200 victims slaughtered in 
order to win the favor of the gods in the war which he was 
about to wage against the Aschantis. This was the third 
atrocity of the kind in the same year. In Kumassi there is 
a place always wet with human blood. 

Prescott writes concerning the Aztecs, "Human sacrifices 
have been practiced by many nations, not excepting the most 
polished nations of antiquity, but never by any on a scale to 
be compared to those in Anahuac. The amount of victims 

1 Pliny: Bk. 30, ch. 3. 

2 Tacitus: Manners of the Germans, chs. 9-39 ; Annals Bk. 14, ch. 31. 
Pliny, Bk. 7, ch. 2 ; Davies, British Druids, pp. 462-466. 

3 Lieut. McPherson: Trans. Asiatic Soc, 1841. 



64 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

immolated on its accursed altars would stagger the faith of 
the least scrupulous believer. ' ' 1 Scarcely any author pretends 
to estimate the yearly sacrifices throughout the empire at less 
than 20,000 and some carry the number as high as 50,000. 

Their mode of sacrificing, as described by Biart, shows a 
diabolic cruelty, unparalleled by that of any other people. 
"Once in possession of a victim, these executioners (the 
priests) carried him naked to a grand altar (techcatl), on 
which they extended him, having first indicated to the assist- 
ants the idol to which they were about to offer sacrifice, so 
that they might adore it. Four of the priests then held the 
unhappy being still by the legs and arms, while another kept 
him from moving his head with the aid of an instrument of 
wood or stone, made in the form of a horseshoe, and some- 
times representing a curved serpent. The stone of the altar 
being convex, the body was bent in an arch, with the breast 
and stomach prominent, and the victim could make no resist- 
ance. The Topiltzin (chief priest) then approached, and, 
with a knife of jasper or chalcedony, in accordance with the 
rite, opened the breast of the prisoner, tore out his heart, 
offered it palpitating to the sun, and then threw it to the 
feet of the idol to burn it and contemplate its ashes with 
veneration. If the idol was large and hollow, they placed 
the bleeding heart in its mouth with the aid of a golden 
spoon, and daubed its lips with the blood. When the victim 
was a prisoner-of-war they cut off his head to preserve it for 
the Tzompatli, and the body was then thrown on the lower 
step of the temple. There the officer or soldier who had 
captured him siezed the prey, carried it away, had it cooked 
and served to his friends at a banquet. They ate only the 
thighs, the arms and the breast. As to the trunk, it was 
reduced to ashes, or given as food to the animals of the royal 
menagerie. The Otomites quartered the victim, and sold 
the remains in the market. Among the Zapotecs, men were 
sacrificed to the gods, women to the goddesses, and children 
to the inferior deities." 2 

Tylor mentions many instances of the ancient custom of 
propitiating the deity by the immolation of human victims 
upon the founding of a city. " So late as 1843, in Germany, 
when a new bridge was built at Halle, a notion was abroad 
among the people that a child was wanted to be built into 

1 Conquest of Mexico, Vol. 1, ch. 3. 2 The Aztecs, pp. 162-163. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion. 65 

the foundation." 1 The wall of Copenhagen, legend says, 
sank as fast as it was built ; so they took an innocent little 
girl, set her on a chair at a table with toys and eatables, and, 
as she played and ate, twelve master masons closed a vault 
over her; then, with clanging music, the wall was raised, 
and stood firm ever after." 2 

Similar rites were practiced throughout Europe, and among 
many of the Asiatic and African peoples. Joshua evidently 
refers to this custom when he says, "Cursed be the man that 
riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho : he shall lay the 
foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son 
shall he set up the gates of it. " 

Instances of human sacrifices might be multiplied almost 
ad infinitum , but our list is already too long. 

The above consideration of the pathological effects result- 
ing from an abnormal relation of the different emotions to the 
total religious experience justifies, in the opinion of the 
writer, the following generalizations. 

First. Religion, like all other human products, such as 
art, science, philosophy, government, etc., is subject to the 
laws of evolution and degeneration, and is modified and 
colored by the general state of mental and physical health 
and degree of development of the individuals composing a 
tribe or race. Different types of individuals and different 
eras must of necessity give birth to different types of religion. 
God or nature has created a variety of types of individuals 
and each type has created a God in its own image. 

Second. The religion of a people can never rise above its 
source, i. e., the stage of their mental and moral develop- 
ment. The religion of a religious genius, though it may be 
accepted by the masses is rarely, if ever, their own religion 
in the truest sense of the word. Our meaning will be made 
clear when we say that after a lapse of twenty centuries of 
unparalleled development there are but few Christians even 
to-day. Also, the difference between the Christianity of the 
third century and of the twentieth is proportional to the dif- 
ference in the mental and moral development of the two cen- 
turies. Likewise, the religion of the savage and of the child 
of civilized parents is and always must be inferior to that of 

1 Primitive Culture, Vol. 1, pp. 104-110. 

2 I am indebted for the majority of the above references to Schaaff- 
hausen, Anthropolog. Studien. ; and W. H. Gardner, Human Sacrifices, 
Open Court, Vol. 8, pp. 3991 ff. and 4000 ff. 



66 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

the cultured adult. It is as impossible to make them sud- 
denly rise to the heights of a religion which has taken the 
most progressive nations centuries upon centuries to evolve 
as it is to hasten the growth of a tree by pulling it up. All 
attempts to do so have proven most injurious to the mental 
and physical health of the savage and the child. The true 
pedagogical method, so long ago recognized and put in use by 
the Buddhists, and the first great and successful missionary, 
St. Paul 1 is, it is encouraging to note, at last being more 
and more appreciated by our own religious teachers and mis- 
sionaries, who are now endeavoring to teach the child and the 
primitive peoples religions which they can understand and 
readily assimilate, religions which fit their stages of devel- 
opment and satisfy their needs. 

Third. A religion cannot be judged by its theology alone, 
for while beliefs undoubtedly influence conduct they are 
themselves frequently products of conduct, i. e., explana- 
tions and justifications of conduct, and conduct itself is 
merely an outward expression of deep-lying emotions, ten- 
dencies, habits, and instincts which the interplay of countless 
physical, physiological, and psychical factors have evolved 
through the ages. In order, therefore, to understand the 
religion of an individual or a race it is not sufficient to know 
his or its creed ; we must know the whole story of his or its 
life and environment, past and present. 

Fourth. Arrested peoples have naturally enough arrested 
forms of religion. These religions cannot be called supersti- 
tions because superstitions, as we understand them, are un- 
known to these peoples. Their beliefs and practices, absurd 
and childish as they seem to us, are congruous with their 
stage of development and are as truly religious as are those 
of more advanced peoples. Unless they injure the mental, 
moral, and physical health of their adherents they cannot be 
considered pathological. But when these same beliefs and 
customs persist among a people who have reached a stage of 
development which is not compatible with them, they become, 
like rudimentary organs, useless and dangerous. 

Fifth. We have seen to what a large extent religion draws 
upon the emotions. Indeed, in the light of what has pre- 
ceded we have no hesitancy in saying with Jonathan Ed- 
wards that true religion consists so much in the affections 

iSee 1 Cor. 3:1-2. 



The Emotional Elements in Religion, 67 

that there can be no true religion without them. One may 
be a philosopher, critic, and even a theologian and still be 
non-religious ; and on the other hand he may be none of 
these to any marked degree and be extremely religious. 
4 'And though I have the gift of prophecy," says Paul, " and 
understand all mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though I 
have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have 
not charity (love, kindness, sympathy, pity, etc.), I am 
nothing." x At least, so far as religion is concerned. It is 
" out of his strongest feelings,' ' as Mr. Fielding writes, that 
" man has built up his faiths, ? ' 2 and a cold intellectual reli- 
gion is an anomaly. 

Sixth. While the emotions are a prime essential of reli- 
gion, as rivers are of fruitful valleys, and while in every nor- 
mal religious consciousness each has its own proper and 
harmonious expression, the most disastrous results follow 
whenever any of them is inordinately exaggerated or intensi- 
fied ; whenever the river, so to speak, overflows its banks and 
spreads over alien areas. The danger here is especially great 
because of the close connection between the emotions and 
bodily states. It is impossible, of course, to determine with 
mathematical accuracy beyond what point the expression of 
an emotion becomes abnormal ; the gradations from the 
normal to the abnormal are imperceptible. In the above 
cases, however, there can be no doubt that the phenomena 
are positively pathological, for in every instance the intellec- 
tual, moral, or physical development of the individual, the 
tribe, or the race has been seriously interfered with. 

Lastly, we have seen the close relationship between the 
emotions and conduct. Disordered religious emotions lead 
to grotesque and pathological deeds, and vice versa. This is 
especially true when the individual is a member of a crowd. 
Man is an organism, no part of which can be injured or de- 
ranged without its influencing other parts and the whole. In 
religion, as in all things, ' sophrosune, ' or the harmonious 
subordination of the parts to the whole, is the healthy and 
normal condition to be striven for. Narrowness, onesided- 
ness, crystallization, bigotry, fanaticism, and intolerance, 
these have always been the curses of humanity. Modern 
education, secular as well as religious, has still much to learn 
from the ancient Greeks who considered 'sophrosune* or 

1 1 Cor. 13:2. 2 The Hearts of Men, p. 308. 



68 Pathological Aspects of Religions, 

plasticity, the foundation of every virtue, and its mission will 
never be fulfilled until it has taught men to be temperate and 
plastic in all things. For the temperate man is pre-emi- 
nently the normal man ; in his soul and body divine harmony 
reigns. He is healthy and happy, moral, religious, and 
worldly, he grows and readily adapts himself to new ideas 
and conditions, in a word, he is the Ubermensch for whom 
are the kingdoms of Heaven and Earth. 



CHAPTER III. 

Mysticism. 

Mysticism, like religion, is a term which has almost as 
many different definitions as it has definers. We look in 
vain for agreement as to its meaning. Some consider it the 
product of a diseased brain, or gross ignorance ; others as 
divine inspiration, or intuition ; some find its seat in subcon- 
sciousness or the Unconscious, others regard it as the highest 
flight of human reason ; some define it in terms of will, de- 
sire, tendency; others in terms of feeling and emotion, and 
not a few make it* a compound of all psychic activities. A 
few examples will substantiate this : 

Nordau : " The word Mysticism describes a state of mind 
in which the subject imagines that he perceives or divines un- 
known and inexplicable relations among phenomena, discerns 
in things hints at mysteries, and regards them as symbols by 
which a dark power seeks to unveil, or at least to indicate, 
all sorts of marvels. ... It is always connected with 
strong emotional excitement. ' ' 

Mysticism, he tells us, is so characteristic of degeneration, 
that ' * there is scarcely a case of the latter in which mysti- 
cism does not appear. ' ' He agrees with Legrain, whom he 
quotes, that "Mystical thoughts are to be laid to the account 
of the insanity of the degenerate. There are two states 
in which they are observed — in epilepsy and in hysterical 
delirium. ' ' 

R. A. Vaughan : " Mysticism is that form of error which 
mistakes for a Divine manifestation the operations of a merely 
human faculty. ' ' In another place he defines it as * ' the 
romance of religion.' ' 

Mill : ' * Mysticism is neither more nor less than ascribing 
objective existence to the subjective creations of the mind, 
and believing that by watching and contemplating these 
ideas of its own making, it can read what takes place in the 
world without. " 

Bonchitte : ' * Mysticism consists in giving to the spon- 



70 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

taneity of the intelligence a larger part than to the other 
faculties." 

Noack : " Mysticism is formless speculation.' ' 

Harnack : ' * Mysticism is rationalism applied to a sphere 
above reason." 

Victor Cousin : " Mysticism consists in substituting direct 
inspiration for indirect, ecstasy for reason, rapture for philos- 
ophy." 

Yon Hartmann : « * Mysticism is the rilling of the conscious- 
ness with a content (feeling, thought, desire), by an involun- 
tary emergence of the same out of the unconscious." 

Recejac : 4 ' Mysticism is the tendency to approach the 
Absolute morally and by means of symbols." 

Inge : * ' Religious Mysticism may be denned as the attempt 
to realize the presence of the living God in the soul and in 
nature, or, more generally, as the attempt to realize, in thought 
and feeling, the immanence of the temporal in the eternal, and 
of the eternal in the temporal. ' ' 

Ewald: "Mystical theology begins by maintaining that 
man is fallen away from God, and craves to be again united 
with Him." 

Pfleiderer: "Mysticism is the immediate feeling of the 
unity of the self with God ; it is nothing, therefore, but the 
fundamental feeling of religion, the religious life at its very 
heart and centre. But what makes the mystical a special 
tendency inside religion, is the endeavor to fix the immedi- 
ateness of the life in God as such, as abstracted from all 
intervening helps and channels whatever, and find a perma- 
nent abode in the abstract inwardness of the life of pious 
feeling. In this God-intoxication, in which self and the 
world are alike forgotten, the subject knows himself to be in 
possession of the highest and fullest truth ; but this truth is 
only possessed in the quite undeveloped, simple, and bare 
form of monotonous feeling ; what truth the subject possesses 
is not filled up by any determination in which the simple 
unity might unfold itself, and it lacks, therefore, the clear- 
ness of knowledge, which is only attained when thought 
harmonizes differences with unity." 

Goethe : ' * Mysticism is the scholastic of the heart, the 
dialectic of the feelings." 

Prof. A. Seth : "Mysticism is a phase of thought, or 
rather perhaps, of feeling, which from its very nature is 
hardly susceptible of exact definition. It appears in connec- 



Mysticism. 71 

tion with the endeavor of the human mind to grasp the Divine 
essence, or the ultimate reality of things, and to enjoy the 
blessedness of actual communion with the highest. The first 
is the philosophic side of Mysticism ; the second, its religious 
side. The thought that is most intensely present with the 
mystic is that of a supreme, all-pervading and indwelling 
Power, in whom all things are one. Hence the speculative 
utterances of Mysticism are always more or less pantheistic 
in character. On the practical side, Mysticism maintains the 
possibility of direct intercourse with this Being of beings . . . 
God ceases to be an object, and becomes an experience." 

Baring-Gould does not define Mysticism, but he undertakes 
to tell us precisely how it is manufactured. His account is 
one of the curiosities of science, and is a striking illustration 
of the effect of dilettanteism in science. " Mysticism," he 
writes, "is produced by the combustion of the gray vascular 
matter in the sensorium — the thalami optici and the corpora 
striata. Mysticism may be combined with intellectual action, 
in which case the gray matter in the cerebral hemispheres 
undergoes oxidation as well. ' ' 1 This is materialism with a 
vengeance. 

The same disagreement is met with when the mystics 
themselves are under consideration. Bishop Warburton, for 
instance, declares that, " Behmen's works would disgrace 
Bedlam at full moon," and John Wesley calls them " sub- 
lime nonsense, inimitable bombast, fustian not to be paral- 
leled." And yet philosophers consider him too important 
not to be considered in their histories, and some go so far as 
to say that ' ' the father of Protestant Mysticism perhaps only 
wanted learning and the gift of clear expression to become a 
German Plato." 2 

Sir Isaac Newton secluded himself for three months to 
study Boehme's views on attraction and the laws of motion, 
which he considered of great value. 

Of our own Walt Whitman, Lombroso says he was a ' s mad 
genius." Dr. Nordau gladly concurs with him in the opin- 
ion that he was " mad, ' ' but that he was a genius : — noth- 
ing could be more absurd. On the contrary, "he was a 
vagabond, a reprobate rake, and his poems contain outbursts 
of erotomania so artlessly shameless that their parallel in lit- 

1 Origin and Develop, of Religious Belief, p. 360. 

2 Inge: Christian Mysticism, p. 278. I am indebted to this writer for 
most of the above definitions. 



72 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

erature could hardly be found with the author's name at- 
tached." Again, "he is morally insane, and incapable of 
distinguishing between good and evil, virtue and crime." 
Prof. James, on the other hand, is, perhaps, one of those 
" many readers who," he tells us, are " quite willing to ad- 
mit that in important respects Whitman is of the genuine 
lineage of the prophets. ,n At any rate, he quotes him as an 
example of those who have sane religious views, and devotes 
several pages to him in his chapter entitled ' 'The Religion of 
Healthy-mindedness. ' ' 

There is the same diversity of opinion concerning many 
other mystics and the reasons for it are several. 

Some of the writers are prepossessed against mysticism. 
They have never even remotely experienced it, are unable to 
understand it, and therefore infer that it must be nonsense, 
a heresy, or disease of some sort. Some find fault with the 
writings and personal lives of the mystics they are acquainted 
with and hastily condemn the whole tribe and their experi- 
ences. Mysticism like religion has been judged too often 
not by its best fruits but by its worst. 

Others, on the contrary, have written of mysticism in the 
highest terms because they have noted mystical experiences 
in the lives of the greatest characters in history. 

Very many have overlooked the fact that mysticism is of 
several varieties, — religious, philosophic, artistic, spontane- 
ous, and induced, some of which are normal, some abnormal, 
and the rest on the border line between the two, — and that, 
therefore, any statement made of one variety does not neces- 
sarily hold true of all or any other. As in the case of re- 
ligion, so here we should speak of mysticisms rather than of 
mysticism. 

Finally, several recent writers have unfortunately employed 
the term to cover a multitude of modern sins such as Spirit- 
ualism, Clairvoyance, Psychic-healing, Magic, etc., which 
are advertised and retailed at fifty cents per hour by 
American women with absurd French names and question- 
able characters. Prof. Munsterberg, for example, in his 
chapter on Mysticism in Psychology and IAfe deals only with 
these which are no more forms of mysticism than they are of 
religion or anything else except humbuggery. 

Much confusion will be avoided if the term be restricted to 

1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 87. 



Mysticism. 73 

its historical and legitimate usage, and if care be taken not 
to make any general sweeping statements concerning mysti- 
cism, but to study each variety carefully and judge it on its 
own merits irrespective of the merits or demerits of the other 
varieties. 

1 'Mysticism, ' ' writes V aughan, « ' has been incorporated in 
theism, atheism, and pantheism. It has given men gods at 
every step, and it has denied all deity except self. It has 
appeared in the loftiest speculation and in the grossest idola- 
try. It has been associated with the wildest license, and 
with the most pitiless asceticism. It has driven men out 
into action, it has dissolved them into ecstasy, it has frozen 
them to torpor. ' ' x That it is frequently born of an abnormal 
nervous system none deny. But many a plant whose roots 
are bitter has beautiful and fragrant flowers, while others 
bear only poisonous weeds. In either case it is by the fruits 
and not the roots that we judge a tree or plant, and so we 
should judge mysticism. Only when mysticism is of such a 
nature as to cause men to become mere idle dreamers and 
render them unfit for the duties of life can it be said to be 
pathological. "The true mystic, " writes Ewald, "never 
withdraws willfully from the business of life, no, not even 
from the smallest business." 2 

Mysticism has appeared in all times and among all peoples. 
We meet with it in China, India, Persia, in all parts of Con- 
tinental Europe, in England, and America. The ancient 
Buddhists and Brahmins, the Greeks, Mohammedans, Christ- 
ians, Jews, and primitive peoples, the world over, all have 
their mystics. Indeed, so universal is it, that we may almost 
say, that wherever there is religion there is mysticism also. 
Dr. Brinton, speaking of primitive religions says, "The 
direct communion between the human and the divine mind, 
between the Man and God, is the one trait shared by the 
highest as well as the lowest; it is the one proof of authenti- 
city which each proclaims for itself. I shall tell you of re- 
ligions so crude as to have no temples or altars, no rites or 
prayers ; but I can tell you of none that does not teach the 
belief of the intercommunion of the spiritual powers and man. 
Every religion is a Revelation — in the opinion of its vota- 
ries. Those which are called the ' < book religions ' ' depend 
mainly upon the record of a revelation, while in all primitive 
faiths inspiration is actual and constant." 

1 Half Hours with Mystics, p. 24. 

2 Quoted by Inge : Christian Mysticism, p. 10. 



74 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

Again, "I am not speaking of deceptions or illusions. 
When I say that all religions depend for their origin and con- 
tinuance directly upon inspiration, I state an historic fact. 
It maybe known under other names, of credit or discredit, 
as mysticism, ecstasy, rhapsody, demoniac possession, the 
divine afflatus, the gnosis, or in its latest christening, « cos- 
mic consciousness.' All are but expressions of a belief that 
knowledge arises, words are uttered, or actions performed, 
not through conscious ideation and reflective purpose, but 
through the promptings of a power above or beyond the indi- 
vidual mind. Prophets and shamans, evangelists and Indian 
medicine-men, all claim, and all claim with honesty, to be 
moved by the god within, the * deus in nobis, ' and to speak 
the words of the Lord." 1 In other words, mysticism is and 
ever has been at the root of all religions, the lowest and the 
highest. 

There are two roads which lead to mysticism. One is the 
negative road of asceticism, the other, the positive road of 
culture and expansiveness. The former leads to morbid in- 
trospection, idle contemplation and abstraction, — to passive 
and philosophic mysticism ; the latter to objective mysticism 
or symbolism, to creative and artistic mysticism. Either or 
both may be religious. The former is strewn with the dry 
bones of men who lived unnatural and unfruitful lives, the 
latter has been trod by men who will be sources of inspiration 
to the end of time. 

It is of course impossible to give an adequate historical 
account of mysticism in one chapter, but a few specimens 
from the mystic literature of the different peoples is neces- 
sary for a proper understanding of its various forms. 2 

Brahmanism. 

One of the earliest ethnic religions in which mysticism ap- 
pears is Brahmanism. The ancient philosophy of this reli- 
gion, the Vedanta Sara, teaches that there is only one Being 
in the Universe, one universal soul, Brahma, which has no 
qualities or attributes. " It is," is all that can be said of it. 
If we wish to describe it we can do so only negatively. All 
else is Maya, or illusion. All human souls are a part of 

1 Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 52 ff. 

2 The materials in this survey are taken from Vaughan : Half Hours 
with Mystics ; Inge : Christian Mysticism ; Jas. Freeman Clarke : Mys- 
tics in All Religions ; and in a few instances from original sources. 



Mysticism. 75 

the universal soul, but they are enclosed in illusive shells 
(the body) from which they should try to escape and be reab- 
sorbed into Brahma. But this they can do only by knowl- 
edge. They must learn that the body and the brain with all 
its faculties are mere illusions, that Brahma is all in all, there 
is naught else besides him. So long as man feels that he is 
something — an individuality, he is nothing, but as soon as he 
perceives that he is nothing, then he has knowledge and is 
all. This knowledge frees his soul from the body, whence it 
returns to its source. To be reabsorbed into Brahma, to be 
Brahma is the supreme object of life. 1 The great philosopher 
Sankhara says, "I am Brahma, I am eternally pure, free, 
one, constant. Whoever annihilates all his desires, and 
ceases from himself, then becomes one with the Universal 
spirit. Theknowerof God becomes God." A similar thought 
runs through the later Buddhism. The universe is a snare 
and delusion. There is no personal God, no individual soul; 
only the impersonal law of Karman, or righteousness, and the 
greatest blessing is Nirvana, or an eternal state analogous to 
dreamless sleep. This is reached by climbing what Hilton 
calls the " Ladder of Perfection." The first stage is reached 
by annihilating the desire and concentrating the mind upon one 
point. In the second stage the intellectual activities cease to 
function but the satisfied sense of unity remains. In the 
third stage the satisfaction departs, and indifference begins, 
along with memory and self-consciousness. In the fourth 
stage the indifference, memory and self-consciousness are 
perfected. (The meaning of the terms ' memory ' and * self- 
consciousness ' is doubtful here) . Still higher stages of con- 
templation are mentioned — "a region where there exists 
nothing, and where the meditator says, ' There exists abso- 
lutely nothing, ' and stops. Then he reaches another region 
where he says : * There are neither ideas nor absence of 
ideas, ' and stops again. Then another region where, l hav- 
ing reached the end of both idea and perception, he stops 
finally. ' This would seem to be, not yet Nirvana, but as 
close an approach to it as this life affords. ' ' 2 

The mysticism of India is of the philosophic type. It is 
the product of centuries of excessive thinking with little or 

1 Cf. Hunt : Pantheism and Christianity, especially p. 14. Also 
Josiah Royce: The World, and the Individual, pp. 47-87, and 141-182. 
An excellent exposition of philosophical mysticism. 

2 James: Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 401. 



76 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

no accompanying muscular activity. It instills in its disci- 
ples the nil admirari spirit, withdraws them from the healthy 
activities of life, and renders them useless citizens of the 
world. They yearn for the negative peace of death and not for 
the fullness of life. It is a religion, if indeed it is a religion 
at all, fit only for the dying. When healthy individuals, or 
those whose minds are not sufficiently philosophic, endeavor 
to attain this Nirvanic condition through artificial means, the 
results are extremely pathological. Abundant examples of 
this are found among the Indian sect called Yogins. " On 
the borders of the Ganges, 7 ' writes Baring-Gould, "the 
Yogin strives by every exaggeration of torture to emancipate 
his soul, and confound it with God ; falling into raptures of 
ecstatic love, his soul addresses the Deity as a wife speaks 
to her husband. Yogins swarming with vermin, covered with 
dirt, mixing filth with their food, running skewers through 
their cheeks, suspending themselves by hooks thrust into 
their flesh, standing on one foot many years, being for half a 
life- time upon sharp nails, strive by withdrawing their affec- 
tions from all things here below, to fix them with greater in- 
tensity on the Divinity above. " 1 The yoga condition is real- 
ized only after five states of yama have been mastered. 

Sufism. 

Although Mohammedanism, of all religions, except the 
Jewish, is the most inimical to mysticism, we find within its 
fold a large number of mystics. "Each succeeding century 
of the Hegira, ' ' writes Vaughan, ' « was found more abundant 
than the last in a class of men who revolted against the let- 
ter in the name of the spirit, and who aspired to a converse 
and a unity with God such as the Koran deemed unattainable 
on this side heaven. The names of the saints and martyrs, 
the poets and philosophers of mysticism, are among the 
brightest in the hagiography and the literature of the Mo- 
hammedan world." 

Mohammed himself was a mystic, and his religious system 
was built upon the revelations vouchsafed him during his 
trances. 

It is chiefly among the Persian Mohammedans, however, 
that ascetic mysticism, known as Sufism, found its strong- 
hold. The Sufis taught that God is everything, and every- 

1 Origin and Develop, of Religious Belief, p. 366. 



Mysticism. 77 

thing is God in becoming. The supreme goal of life is ab- 
sorption into God, which can be attained by ascetic exercises 
followed by inaction, solitude, ecstasy, and transport. 

The first of the Sufis was a female saint, named Rabia, a sis- 
ter in spirit to Mme. Guy on. The story is told of her, that 
once, when she was sick, two holy men stood by her bedside 
discussing religious subjects. One of them said, "The 
praise of that man is not sincere who refuses to bear the 
chastening strokes of the Lord. " The other went beyond 
him, saying, "He is not sincere who does not rejoice in 
them. " Rabia, detecting something of self in that very joy, 
surpassed them both as she added, ' « He is not sincere who 
does not, beholding his Lord, become totally unconscious of 
them." 

She declared herself spouse of heaven, — described her will 
and personality as lost in God. When asked how she had 
reached this stage she replied, ' 4 1 attained it when everything 
which I had found I lost again in God.' ' When questioned 
as to the mode she replied, ' ' Thou, Hassan, hast found Him 
by reason and through means ; I immediately, without mode 
or means. " This is an example of spontaneous mysticism. 

Bustami, a Persian Sufi of the ninth century, is one of the 
most extravagant of mystics. To believe in one's individu- 
ality and existence was to him idolatry, the worst of crimes. 

* ' When man adores God, ' ' he said, « « God adores him- 
self." So absorbed was he in Deity that he declared himself 
the divine power and wisdom and goodness. "lam a sea 
without bottom, without beginning, without end, ' ' he cried, 
" I am the throne of God, the word of God. I am Gabriel, 
Michael, Israfil; I am Abraham, Moses, Jesus." 

It is interesting to compare with this the lines of the 
American mystic and philosopher Emerson : 

"I am. the owner of the sphere, 
Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, 
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain." 

Jalaluddin Rumi, a Sufi poet of the thirteenth century, 
gives the following allegorical account of the mystical aims 
and ideal. In order to settle a dispute between the Chinese 
and Greeks as to which race is the more skillful in the art of 
decoration, a certain Sultan to whom they appealed bade the 
rival artists to manifest their skill on two structures facing 
each other. 



78 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

"The Chinese ask him for a thousand colors, 
All that they ask he gives right royally; 
And every morning from his treasure-house 
A hundred sorts are largely dealt them out. 
The Greeks despise all color as a stain, — 
Effacing every hue with nicest care. 
Brighter and brighter shines their polished front, 
More dazzling, soon, than gleams the floor of heaven. 
This hueless sheen is worth a thousand dyes, — 
This is the moon— they but her cloudy veil; 
All that the cloud is bright or golden with 
Is but the lending of the moon or sun. 
And now at length, are China's artists ready. 
The cymbals clang — the Sultan hastens thither, 
And sees enrapt the glorious gorgeousness — 
Smit nigh to swooning by those beamy splendors. — 
Then, to the Grecian palace opposite. 
Just as the Greeks have put their curtain back, 
Down glides a sunbeam through the rifted clouds, 
And, lo, the colors of that rainbow house 
Shine, all reflected on those glassy walls 
That face them, rivalling; the sun hath painted 
With lovlier blending, on that stony mirror 
The colors spread by man so artfully. 
Know then, O friend! such Greeks the Sufis are, 
Owning nor book nor master; and on earth 
Having one sole and simple task, — to make 
Their hearts a stainless mirror for their God. 
Is thy heart clear and argent as the moon? 
Then imaged there may rest, innumerous, 
The forms and hues of heaven. 1 ' * 

The last phrases : To make their hearts a stainless mirror 
for their God. Is thy heart clear and argent as the moon? 
are significant and characteristic expressions employed by 
almost all religious mystics. Indeed, we may say that the 
heart, or the feelings, especially those connected with the 
sexual impulse, is the seat of religious mysticism, just as the 
brain is the seat of philosophy and science. In the religious 
type of mysticism the senses and intellect play an insignificant 
and undesirable role ; the voice of reason is silenced, the 
exercise of the senses suspended, and sometimes even de- 
stroyed by every conceivable device. With Florizel in the 
Winter's Tale, the mystic is almost willing to say: 

"I am; and by my fancy; if my reason 
Will thereto be obedient, I have reason; 
If not, my senses better pleased with madness 
Do bid it welcome. 11 

In every land and every age the mystic has been enjoined to 

11 Put wool within the ear of flesh, for that 
Makes deaf the inner hearing, as with wool; 

1 Cf. the account given by Al Ghazali, a Persian philosopher and 
theologian, Quoted by James, Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 
402-405. 



Mysticism. 79 

If that can hear, the spirit's ear is deaf. 
Let sense make blind no more the spirit's eye. 
Be without ear, without a sense or thought, 
Hark only to the voice, Home, wanderer, home!" 

And that home, it need hardly be said, is not on earth, 
among fellow-beings, but far away in the dark, inane, trans- 
scendental realm where time and space, thoughts and feel- 
ings, and all earthly experiences are completely forgotten. 
The strenuous efforts to mortify the flesh and make of the 
brain a polished < tabula rasa ' often undermine the physical 
and psychical health of the mystic, and many of their experi- 
ences remind us forcibly of the dreams and hallucinations of 
fever patients. The servant Said, for example, thus describes 
to Mohammed his mystical experience : 

. "My tongue clave fever-dry, my blood ran fire, 
My nights were sleepless with consuming love, 
Till night and day sped past — as flies a lance 
Grazing a buckler's rim; a hundred faiths 
Seemed then as one ; a hundred thousand years 
No longer than a moment. In that hour 
All past eternity and all to come 
Was gathered up in one stupendous NOW, — 
Let understanding marvel as it may. 
Where men see clouds, on the ninth heaven I gaze, 
And see the throne of God. All heaven and hell 
Are bare to me and all men's destinies, 
The heavens and earth, they vanish at my glance: 
The dead rise at my look. I tear the veil 
From all the worlds, and in the hall of heaven 
I set me central, radiant as the sun." 

Then spake the prophet : 

"Friend, thy steed is warm; 
Spur him no more. The mirror in thy breast 
Did slip its fleshly case, now put it up — 
Hide it once more, or thou wilt come to harm." 

Almost all the literature of Persian mysticism is written in 
verse, the true language of love and religion. It is to the 
Orient, and especially to Persia, the home of the well-known 
Sufi poet Omar Khayyam that we must turn if we wish to 
see the highest development of the emotions. One of the 
oldest of civilized peoples, they possess, more perhaps, than 
any other, the oldest element in human nature and the power 
to express it. It is little wonder, then, that when the Per- 
sians received Mohammedanism they should have breathed into 
it the warm breath of their own emotional lives, and made of 
it an intoxicating love-feast. 

The following lines from Mahmud 's 4 Gulschen Ras ' show 
us a religion permeated from centre to circumference with 



80 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

the Persian spirit, a religion born of the Persian clime and 

vine. 

"Know'st thou who the Host may be who pours the spirit's wine 
Know'st thou what his liquor is whose taste is so divine? 
The Host is thy Beloved One — the wine annihilation, 
And in the fiery draught thy soul drinks in illumination. 
Up, soul! and drink with burning lip the wine of ecstasy, 
The drop should haste to lose itself in His unbounded sea. 
At such a draught mere intellect swims wildered and grows wild; 
Love puts the slave-ring in his ear and makes the rebel mild. 
Our Friend holds out the royal wine and bids us drink it up; 
The whole world is a drinking-house and everything a cup, 
Drunken even Wisdom lies — all in revel sunken; 
Drunken are the earth and heaven ; all the angels drunken. 
Giddy is the very sky, round so often hasting, 
Up and down it staggers wide, with but a single tasting. 
Such the wine of might they drink in blest carouse above. 
So the angels higher lift their flaming height of love. 
Now and then the dregs they fling earthward in their quaffing 
And where'er a drop alights, lo, an Eden laughing." 

Most of the terms here have, of course, a symbolic and 
mystical meaning, and in this respect it resembles the He- 
brew mystic poem, the Song of Songs. Like the latter also, 
Sufi literature abound in erotic expressions, and furnishes 
further evidence of the close relation between love and reli- 
gion. 

Christian Mysticism. 

Passing over the primitive kind of mysticism in ancient 
Judaism, the patriarchs who conversed familiarly with Jeho- 
vah, Moses, and the later prophets, we come next to early 
Christianity, which may be described as Judaism tinged with 
Platonic mysticism. The Jewish Jehovah was a 4 deus ex 
machina ' whose kingdom was in a far-distant transcendental 
realm, whereas the God of the Gospel writers is an immanent 
God, a * deus in nobis' whose kingdom is in every individual. 
The statement of Richard of St. Victor, " If thou wishest to 
search out the deep things of God, search out the depths of 
thine own spirit "is a clear expression of this conviction. 
Similar statements are found in the Gospel and Epistles of 
St. John, the first of the Christian mystics, and also in the 
writings of St. Paul. 

But these lofty conceptions were later interpreted by infe- 
rior minds to mean that, hidden within the frame of flesh 
there is a divine particle, a precious gem, as it were, buried 
in much worthless soil, which if we dig deep enough we will 
surely find, and then be able to declare with ST. PAUL, "I 



Mysticism. 81 

live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." This belief, as we 
shall see, led to utter contempt for the body and worldly 
affairs, and to practices which were positively pathological. 
St. Paul tells us in unmistakable language that a trance in 
which he saw Jesus was the cause of his conversion to Chris- 
tianity. 1 Later, during his missionary journeys he saw more 
visions, heard voices, and believed himself to be guided by 
the * * Spirit of Jesus, ' ' 2 and in another place he tells us that 
he was * ' caught up to the third heaven . . . into paradise, 
and heard unspeakable words. ' ' 3 There can be no doubt 
that these visions exerted a great influence upon Paul and 
his converts. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians he goes 
so far as to commend prophecy and speaking in unknown 
tongues, and eighteen centuries later his injunction bore fruit 
in the form of Irvingism. 

A contemporary of Paul, and one who exerted a great in- 
fluence on the early Christian Church was PHILO, a Hellen- 
ized Jew, and a father of Neo-Platonism. According to 
him we can obtain true knowledge and virtue only by self- 
renunciation, and contemplation of the Divine Essence. The 
soul should cut off its right hand. ... It should shun the 
whirlpool of life, and not even touch it with the tip of a fin- 
ger. The soul of man is divine, and his highest wisdom is 
to become as much as possible a stranger to the body with 
its embarrassing appetites. 4 The highest stage is when a man 
leaves behind his finite self-consciousness, and sees God face 
to face, standing in Him from henceforward, and knowing 
Him not by reason, but by clear certainty. 5 The great aim 
of Philo was to wed philosophy to religion ; to harmonize the 
speculations of his ' * divine Plato ' f to the dogmatic teachings 
of Moses, which was indeed a fantastical attempt. PLOTI- 
NUS, the founder of Alexandrian Neo-Platonism, though 
not a Christian is always considered, on account of his great 
influence on early Christian thought, in works on Christian 
Mysticism. He lived the life of an ascetic, and endeavored 
by excessive austerities to realize what he calls the « angelic 
life;' the ' life of the disembodied in the body.' Inspired 
by Ammonius Saccas and Numerius he reacted strongly 
against the universal skepticism which prevailed in his day, 

1 Acts, 22:6-11; 17-21. 26:13-18. Gal. 1:12. 

2 Acts, 15:9-10; 18:9; 27:23-24. 
a 2 Cor. 12:2-4. 

4 R. A. Vaughan : 1, p. 67. 6 Inge : Christian Mysticism, p. 85. 

6 



82 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

and which was naturally distasteful to him. " Truth, 
according to Plotinus, is not the agreement of our apprehen- 
sion of an external object with the object itself, it is rather 
the agreement of the mind with itself. The objects we con- 
template and that which contemplates, are identical for the 
philosopher. Both are thought ; only like can know like ; 
all truth is within us. By reducing the soul to its most ab- 
stract simplicity, we subtilize it so that it expands into the 
infinite. In such a state we transcend our finite selves, and 
are one with the infinite; this is the privileged condition of 
ecstasy. These blissful intervals, but too evanescent and too 
rare, were regarded as the reward of philosophic asceticism — 
the seasons of refreshing, which were to make amends for all 
the stoical austerities of the steep ascent towards the abstrac- 
tion of the primal unity. "I myself," he writes, " have 
realized it (ecstasy) but three times as yet, and Porphyry 
hitherto not once. ,Jl 

He gives us the following psychological description of 
ecstasy: " The soul when possessed by intense love of Him 
divests herself of all form which she has, even of that which 
is derived from Intelligence ; for it is impossible, when in 
conscious possession of any other attribute, either to behold 
or to be harmonized with Him. Thus the soul must be neither 
good nor bad nor aught else, that she may receive Him only; 
Him alone, she alone. ' ' If the soul has reached this condi- 
tion it melts into Him, i « and they are no more two but one ; 
and the soul is no more conscious of the body or of the mind, 
but knows that she has what she desired, that she is where 
no deception can come, and that she would not exchange her 
bliss for all the heaven of heavens. ' ' 2 This, it will be seen, 
is hardly distinguishable from the Vedanta philosophy. 

The next great name we reach is HIEROTHEUS, prob- 
ably a Syrian mystic and teacher of Dionysius the Areopagite. 
"The system of Hierotheus is not exactly Pantheism, but 
Pan-Nihilism. Everything is an emanation from the Chaos 
of bare indetermination which he calls God, and everything 
will return thither. There are three periods of existence — 
1. the present world, which is evil, and is characterized by 
motion ; 2. the progressive union with Christ, who is all, 
and in this is the period of rest ; 3. the period of fusion of 
all things in the Absolute. The three Persons of the Trin- 

!R. A. Vaughan: 2, pp. 76-81. 2 See Inge: p. 97. 



Mysticism. 83 

ity, he dares to say, will then be swallowed up, and even 
the devils are thrown into the same melting-pot. Consist- 
ently with mystical principles, these three world periods are 
also phases in the development of individual souls. In the 
first stage the mind aspires towards its first principles ; in 
the second it becomes Christ, the universal Mind ; in the 
third its personality is wholly merged. The greater part of 
his book is taken up with the adventures of the Mind in 
climbing the ladder of perfection ; it is a kind of theosophi- 
cal romance, much more elaborate and fantastic than the 
" revelations " of medieval mystics. The author professes 
to have himself enjoyed the ecstatic union more than once, 
and his method of preparing for it is that of the Quietists : 
4 'To me it seems right to speak without words, and under- 
stand without knowledge that which is above words and 
knowledge ; this I apprehend to be nothing but the myste- 
rious silence and mystical quiet which destroys conscious- 
ness and dissolves forms. Seek, therefore, silently and 
mystically, that perfect and primitive union with the Arch- 
God." 

At one stage of the "ascent of the Mind it is crucified, 
with the soul on the right and the body on the left ; it is 
buried for three days ; it descends into Hades ; then it as- 
cends again, till it reaches Paradise, and then is united to 
the tree of life : then it descends below all essences, and 
sees a formless luminous essence, and marvels that it is the 
same essence that it has seen on high. Now it comprehends 
the truth, that God is consubstantial with the Universe, and 
that there are no real distinctions anywhere. So it ceases to 
wander. 'All these doctrines,' concludes the seer, ' which 
are unknown even to angels, have I disclosed to thee, my 
son' (Dionysius, probably). 'Know, then, that all nature 
will be confused with the Father — that nothing will perish 
or be destroyed, but all will return, be sanctified, united, 
and confused. Thus God will be all in all.' " x This, as will 
readily be seen, is a combination of Oriental and Christian 
Mysticism and Neo-Platonism. 

DIONYSIUS lays great stress on the ' ' negative road " to 
God ; on abstraction or rather subtraction. The argument 
for this procedure is stated clearly and briefly by Mr. Inge 
as follows: "Since God is the Infinite, and the Infinite is 

1 Inge: Christian Mysticism, pp. 102-104. 



84 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

the antithesis of the finite, every attribute which can be af- 
firmed of a finite being may be safely denied of God. Hence 
God can only be described by negatives. He can only be 
discovered by stripping off all the qualities and attributes 
which veil Him ; He can only be reached by divesting our- 
selves of all the distinctions of personality, and sinking or 
rising into our "uncreated nothingness;" and he can only 
be imitated by aiming at an abstract spirituality, the pas- 
sionless " apathy" of an universal, which is nothing in par- 
ticular.' yl 

"Nearly all that repels us in medieval religious life," adds 
Mr. Inge, "its ' other- worldlin ess,' and passive hostility to 
civilization — the emptiness of its ideal life — its maltreat- 
ment of the body — its disparagement of family life — the 
respect which it paid to indolent contemplation — springs 
from this one root." 

Leaving early oriental and Christian mysticism, we shall 
next glance hurriedly at later European mysticism. In the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries we encounter such names as 
Bernard, Hugo, and Richard of St. Victor, Bonaventura and 
Albertus Magnus. It will suffice for our purpose to quote 
a few paragraphs from the last named writer, which will 
show how great a barrier the * ' negative road " had become 
to the march of civilization. 

"When St. John says that God is a Spirit," says Albertus 
in the first paragraph of his treatise *Zte adhaerendo Deo,' 
and that He must be worshipped in spirit, he means that 
the mind must be cleared of all images. When thou 
pray est, shut thy door — that is, the doors of thy senses. 
Keep them barred and bolted against all phantasms and im- 
ages. Nothing pleases God more than a mind free from 
all occupations and distractions. Such a mind is in a man- 
ner transformed into God, for it can think of nothing, and 
love nothing, except God ; other creatures and itself it only 
sees in God. He who penetrates into himself, and so 
transcends himself, ascends truly to God. He whom I love 
and desire is above all that is sensible, and all that is intelli- 
gible ; sense and imagination cannot bring us to Him, but 
only the desire of a pure heart. This brings us into the 
darkness of the mind, whereby we can ascend to the con- 

ilnge: Christian Mysticism, p. 3, and Vaughan: Hours with the 
Mystics, Vol. 1, pp. 117. 



Mysticism. 85 

templation even of the mystery of the Trinity. Do not 
think about the world, nor about thy friends, nor about the 
past, present or future ; but consider thyself to be outside 
of the world and alone with God, as if thy soul were already 
separated from the body and had no longer any interest in 
peace or war, or the state of the world. Leave thy body 
and fix thy gaze on the uncreated light. Let nothing come 
between thee and God. The soul in contemplation views 
the world from afar off, just as, when we proceed to God 
by the way of abstraction, we deny Him, first of all, bodily 
and sensible attributes, then intelligible qualities, and, lastly 
that being (esse) which keeps Him among created things." 
This, according to Dionysius, is the best mode of union 
with God. 1 

Similar views, only much more emphasized and exagger- 
ated, were held by Meister Eckart, a great German specu- 
lative mystic of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth 
centuries. The following are the salient points in his 
mysticism : 

1 'He who is at all times alone is worthy of God. He 
who is at all times at home, to him is God present. He who 
standeth at all times in a present Now in him doth God the 
Father bring forth his son without ceasing. . . . He 
who finds one thing otherwise than another — to whom God 
is dearer in one thing than another, that man is carnal, and 
still afar off and a child. But he to whom God is alike in all 
things hath become a man. . . . All that is in the Godhead 
is one. Thereof we can say nothing. It is above all names, 
above all nature. The essence cf all creatures, is eternally 
a divine life in Deity. God works. So doth not the God- 
head. Therein they are distinguished, — in working and 
not working. The end of all things is the hidden darkness 
of the eternal Godhead, unknown and never to be known." 

"I declare by good truth and truth everlasting, that in 
every man who hath utterly abandoned self, God must com- 
municate himself according to all his power, so completely 
that he retains nothing in His life, in His essence, in His 
nature, in His Godhead — He must communicate all to the 
bringing forth of fruit." 

' ' When the Will is so united that it becometh a one in 
oneness, then doth the Heavenly Father produce his only 

1 Inge: Christian Mysticism, p. 145. 



86 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

begotten Son in Himself and in ine. Wherefore in Himself 
and in me? I am one with Him — He cannot exclude me. 
In the self-same operation doth the Holy Ghost receive his 
existence, and proceeds from me as from God. Wherefore ? 
I am in God, and if the Holy Ghost deriveth not his being 
from me, He deriveth it not from God. I am in nowise 
excluded." 

* ' There is something in the soul which is above the soul, 
divine, simple, and absolute Nothing, rather unnamed than 
named, unknown than known. So long as thou lookest on 
thyself as a jSomething, so long thou knowest as little what 
this is, as my mouth knows what color is, or as my eye 
knows what taste is. Of this I am wont to speak in my 
sermons, and sometimes I have called it a Power, sometimes 
an uncreated Light, sometimes a divine Spark. It is abso- 
lute and free from all names and forms, as God is free and 
absolute in Himself. It is higher than knowledge, higher 
than love, higher than grace. For in all these there is still 
distinction. In this power doth blossom and nourish God, 
with all His Godhead, and the Spirit nourished in God. In 
this power doth the Father bring forth His only-begotten 
Son, as essentially as in Himself, and in this light ariseth 
the Holy Ghost. This Spark rejects all creatures, and will 
have only God, simple as He is in Himself. It rests satis- 
fied neither with the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy 
Ghost, nor with the three Persons, as far as each exists in 
its respective attributes. I will say what sounds more mar- 
vellous yet. This Light is satisfied only with the super- 
essential essence. It is bent on entering into the simple 
Ground, the still Waste, where is no distinction, neither 
Father, Son, nor Holy Ghost, into the Unity where no man 
dwelleth. There is it satisfied in the light, there it is one ; 
then is it in itself, immovable ; and yet by this Immobility 
are all things moved." 

' ' God in Himself was not God — in the creature only 
hath He become God — I ask to be rid of God — that is, 
that God, by His grace, would bring me into the Essence — 
that Essence which is above God, and above distinction. I 
would enter into that eternal Unity which was mine before 
all time, when I was what I would, and would what I was ; — 
into a state above all addition or diminution ! — into the Im- 
mobility whereby all is moved." 

" Folks say to me often — 'Pray God for me.' Then I 



Mysticism, 87 

think with myself, * Why go ye out ? Why abide ye not 
in your own selves, and take hold on your own possession? 
Ye have all truth essentially within you.'" 

" God and I are one in Knowing. God's Essence is His 
Knowing, and God's Knowing makes me to Know Him. 
Therefore is His Knowing my Knowing. The eye whereby 
I see God is the same eye whereby He seeth me. Mine 
eye and the eye of God are one eye, one vision, one Knowl- 
edge, and one love." According to Eckart, to believe in 
one's individuality is a sin ; it is both stealing from God 
and cheating one's own self. "I hesitate to receive any- 
thing from God," he says, "for to be indebted to Him 
would imply inferiority, and make a distinction between 
Him and me ; whereas, the righteous man is, without dis- 
tinction, in substance and in nature, what God is." 

" If any man hath understood this sermon, it is well for 
him. Had not a soul of you been here, I must have spoken 
the very same words. He who hath not understood it, let 
him not trouble his heart therewith, for as long as a man is 
not himself like unto this truth, so long will he never under- 
stand it, seeing that it is no truth of reflection, to be thought 
out, but is come directly out of the heart of God without 
medium" 1 

" Some people are for seeing God with their eyes, as they 
can see a cow (which thou lovest for the milk and for the 
cheese, and for thine own profit). Thus do all those who 
love God for the sake of outward riches or of inward com- 
fort ; they do not love aright, but seek only themselves and 
their own advantage. . . . God is a pure good in Himself, 
and therefore will he dwell nowhere save in a pure soul. 
There He may pour Himself out ; into that He can wholly 
flow. What is purity ? It is that man should have turned 
himself away from all creatures, and have set his heart so 
entirely on the pure good, that no creature is to him a com- 
fort, that he has no desire for aught creaturely, save as far 
as he may apprehend therein the pure good which is God. 
And as little as the bright eye can endure aught foreign in 
it, so little can the pure soul bear anything in it, any stain, 
aught between it and God. To it all creatures are pure to 
enjoy, for it enjoyeth all creatures in God, and God in all 
creatures. Yea, so pure is that soul that she seeth through 

1 The italics are mine. 



88 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

herself, she needeth not to seek God afar off, she finds Him 
in herself, when, in her natural purity, she hath flowed out 
into the supernatural of the pure Godhead. And this is 
she in God and God in her, and what she doeth that she 
doeth in God and God doeth it in her." 

* ' Then shall a man be truly poor when he is as free from 
his creature will as he was before he was born. And I say 
to you, by the eternal truth, that so long as ye desire to 
fulfill the will of God, and have any desire after eternity 
and God, so long are ye not truly poor. He alone hath 
true spiritual poverty who wills nothing, knows nothing, 
desires nothing." 

"For us to follow truly what God willeth, is to follow 
that whereto we are most inclined, — whereto we feel most 
frequent inward exhortation and strongest attraction. The 
inner voice is the voice of God." 1 

Such are Dr. Eckart's labored and negative descriptions 
of God and the soul's mystical union with Him. It is 
very difficult to determine exactly where he belongs. In 
his teachings there appear elements of pantheism, German 
idealism, Buddhism, Sufism, quietism, ego-theism ; in fact, 
nearly every « ism' in the mystical catalogue. That his life 
was pure and holy, and even inspiring ; that his mind's eye 
caught intermittent flashes of divine light there can be no 
doubt, but that his mind was well balanced is hard to be- 
lieve. He was the peculiar product of a turbulent age, an 
age which had already begun to react violently against dry 
formalism, orthodoxy, and the tyranny of the Church. He 
came to teach men the truth they had long since forgotten, 
namely, that religion is to be found not in the Church, but 
in the inmost depths of their own hearts ; that Christ could 
be reached immediately as well, if not better, than through 
the medium of a corrupted Church, which claimed to be the 
sole possessor of the keys of heaven. His mission was a 
grand and lofty one, but he suffered the fate of the majority 
of reactionists ; he rebounded too far in the other direction. 
Disgusted with objectivism and church-slavery, he wipes 
the former completely out with one sweep of the hand, 
making subjectivism the all in all, and for the latter he gives 

1 These quotations are taken from Mr. R. A. Vaughan (Hours with 
the Mystics, p. 188-195, Vol. 1), who has translated and paraphrased 
them from Eckart's original writings and from the German authorities, 
Martensen and Schmidt. 



Mysticism. 89 

us not liberty but unbridled license, which is so dear to the 
hearts of the rabble. It is only, however, through such ex- 
tremes that the golden mean is finally reached, and from 
this point of view we must certainly grant that Meister 
Eckart lived and toiled not in vain. 1 

Of TAULER, RUYSBROECK, SUSO, NICHOLAS OF 
BASLE, the author of " German Theology " and others, 
the successors, and in a sense the disciples of Eckart, we 
have very little to say. They were all of them great and 
devout men, who by their teachings and exemplary lives did 
much to weaken the power of the Popes over the minds and 
bodies of men, and were potent factors in bringing on the 
Reformation. 

Their mysticism was not as thorough-going as Eckart's ; 
there is less pantheism, less morbid introspection, less quiet- 
ism, and much more of the positive, human qualities and 
virtues in their doctrines. They point and lead us to the 
' via affirmativa,' the road of healthy activity, though they 
could not themselves progress very far along it, so encum- 
bered were they with the heavy chains which stretched back 
for several centuries. 

Of TAULER, Luther writes to Spalatin, "If you would 
be pleased to make acquaintance with a solid theology of the 
good old sort in the German tongue, get John Tauler's ser- 
mons ; for neither in Latin nor in our own language have I 
ever seen a theolrgy more sound or more in harmony with 
the Gospel." A few quotations from Tauler's writings will 
show that this praise was quite well-merited. Repudiating 
pantheism Tauler says, " God is the Being of all beings, but 
He is none of all things. God is all, but all is not God ; 
He far transcends the universe in which He is imminent." 2 
He also lays great stress on the active will and has little pa- 
tience with the quietists who linger on the * via negativa.' 
"We must lop and prune vices," he says, "not nature, 
which is in itself good and noble. . . . Christ himself 
never arrived at the emptiness of which these men (the neg- 
ative mystics) talk." Of contemplation he says, " Spiritual 
enjoyments are the food of the soul, and are only to be taken 
for nourishment and support to help us in our active work. 



1 An excellent criticism of Eckart is to be found in Inge, loc cit., pp. 
148-166. 

2 Inge: loc. cit., pp.183. 



90 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

Sloth often makes men fain to be excused from their work 
and set to contemplation. Never trust in a virtue that has 
not been put into practice." 1 The following are the condi- 
tions of true Mysticism. "No one can be free from the ob- 
servance of the laws of God and the practice of virtue. No 
one can unite himself to God in emptiness without true love 
and desire for God. No one can be holy without becoming 
holy, without good works. No one may rest in God with- 
out love for God. No one can be exalted to a stage which 
he has not longed for or felt." Again, "If a man, while 
busy in this lofty inward work, were called by some duty in 
the Providence of God to cease therefrom and cook a broth 
for some sick person, or any other such service, he should 
do so willingly and with great joy. This I say, that if it 
happened to me that I had to forsake such work and go out 
to preach or aught else, I should go cheerfully, believing not 
only that God would be with me, but that he would vouch- 
safe me, it may be, even greater grace and blessing in that 
external work undertaken out of true love in the service of 
my neighbor than I should perhaps receive in my season of 
loftiest contemplation. 2 

There are those who thoughtlessly maim and torture their 
miserable flesh, and yet leave untouched the inclinations 
which are the root of evil in their hearts. Ah, my friend, 
what hath thy poor body done to thee that thou shouldst so 
torment it? Oh folly ! Mortify and slay thy sins, not thine 
own flesh and blood." 3 

His mysticism is well epitomized in the following two 
sentences from his sermon on the fifteenth Sunday after 
Trinity. "When through all manner of exercises the out- 
ward man has been converted into the inward, reasonable 
man, and thus the two, that is to say, the powers of the 
senses and the powers of the reason, are gathered up into the 
very centre of the man's being — the unseen depths of his 
spirit wherein lies the image of God, — and thus he flings 
himself into the divine abyss, in which he dwelt eternally 
before he was created ; then w r hen God finds the man thus 
simply and nakedly turned towards Him, the Godhead bends 
down and descends into the depths of the pure, waiting 
soul, and transforms the created soul, drawing it up into the 

1 Inge: loc. cit., pp. 188. 

2 Vaughan: Hours with the Mystics, 1, pp. 247. 

8 Ibid., pp. 251. 



Mysticism. 91 

uncreated essence, so that the spirit becomes one with Him. 
Could such a man behold himself, he would see himself so 
noble that he would fancy himself God, and see himself a 
thousand times nobler than he is in himself, and would per- 
ceive all the thoughts and purposes, words and works, and 
have all the knowledge of all men that ever were." 1 

RUYSBROECK is no less sparing in his criticism and con- 
demnation of the passive, easy-going mystics. There are 
some he says, who mistake mere laziness for holy abstraction ; 
others give the rein to " spiritual self-indulgence;" others 
neglect all religious exercises ; others fall into anti-nomian- 
ism, and " think that nothing is forbidden to them" — "they 
will gratify any appetite which interrupts their contempla- 
tion : " these are " by far the worst of all." " There is an- 
other error," he proceeds, " of those who like to call them- 
selves * theopaths.' They take every impulse to be Divine, 
and repudiate all responsibility. Most of them live in 
invert sloth." 2 These are veins of pure gold, but unfor- 
tunately there is much worthless ore encasing them, much 
mysticism of the type dealt with in the earlier part of this 
chapter. Tauler and his brother mystics are too close to 
Eckart and the mystics of the preceding centuries to be 
able to completely free themselves from their influence. The 
sun is just beginning to peep through the thick clouds, but 
they are not dispersed yet. The full light of truth has not 
yet broken upon the European Christians. Luther is still 
unborn. 

Passing over from Germany to Spain we meet with two 
great mystics contending with might and main against the 
rapid progress of the Reformation — ST. THERESA and 
ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS. The mysticism of the Ger- 
mans, as we have seen, was speculative and autonomous ; 
that of the Spaniards, congruent with their temperaments, 
was emotional and controlled by the Church. ' < The church, 
by means of the confessor," writes Mr. Vaughan, "made 
mysticism itself the innermost dungeon of her prison-house. 
Every emotion was methodically docketed ; every yearning 
of the heart minutely catalogued. The sighs must always 
ascend in the right place ; the tears must trickle in orthodox 
course. The prying calculations of the casuist had measured 
the sweep of every wave in the heaving ocean of the soul. 

1 Ibid., pp. 290. 2 Inge: loc. cit., pp. 171. 



92 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

The instant terrible knife cut off the first spray of love that 
shot out beyond the trimly shaven border of prescription. 
Strong feelings were dangerous guests, unless they knew 
(like the old Romans) when to go home and slay themselves, 
did that Tiberius, the director, but bestow on them a 
frown." 1 

The story of ST. THERESA'S life furnishes us a clew to 
her mysticism. Her earliest intellectual food was The Lives 
of the Saints. These produced such an impression upon her 
childish mind that at the age of seven she resolved to be- 
come a martyr like the heroes and heroines of her books, 
and set out with her younger brother on a walk to Africa 
where she hoped to be slaughtered by the Moors. Her 
plans, however, were frustrated by her uncle who met them 
at the bridge and restored them to their parents. Her doll's 
houses were nunneries and in the garden her favorite occu- 
pation was making mud hermitages. At the age of fifteen 
she was sent off to a convent, and later determined to be- 
come a nun. She escaped to a Carmelite convent. In her 
twentieth year she took the vows. Shortly afterwards she 
was stricken with a complication of diseases, — cramps, con- 
vulsions, catalepsies, vomitings, faintings, etc., etc. "At 
one time she lay four days in a state of coma ; her grave 
was dug, hot wax had been dropped upon her eyelids, and 
extreme unction administered ; the funeral service was per- 
formed ; when she came to herself, expressed her desire to 
confess, and received absolution. These troubles she at- 
tributed to natural causes, but when they recurred later in 
life she attributed them to supernatural causes. 
After three years (thanks to St. Joseph) Theresa was re- 
stored to comparative health, but remained subject all her 
life, at intervals, to severe pains. On her recovery, she 
found her heart at peace, but too much divided between 
Christ and the world. That is to say, she was glad when 
her friends came to see her, and she enjoyed witty and 
agreeable chat, through the grating, with ladies whose con- 
versation was not always confined to spiritual topics. She 
was conscience-stricken for such unfaithfulness, and bitterly 
regretted the laxity of her confessors, who failed to tell her 
that it was a heinous crime. In her twenty-fourth year, she 
resumed the practice of mental prayer, and for the next 

1 Vaughan: loc. cit., 1, pp. 152. 



Mysticism. 93 

twenty years continued it, with many inward vicissitudes, 
and alternate tendernesses and desertions on the part of the 
Divine Bridegroom. 1 

The turning point in her life came in her forty-first year, 
when she read St. Augustine's " Confessions." " When I 
came to his conversion," she says, "and read how he heard 
the voice in the garden, it was just as if the Lord called 
me." It was soon after this that she began again to have 
visual and auditory hallucinations and comatose states. 
About her fiftieth year she was appointed prioress of a con- 
vent of the Carmelite Order, in which there were to be 
thirteen fervent virgins, " discalceated, serge-clad, flesh- 
abhorring, couched on straw, and all but perpetually dumb." 
From now until her death, she was busily engaged founding 
convents and monasteries of barefooted Carmelites. Of 
the former she lived to see sixteen established ; of the latter, 
fourteen. Her ideal man was Peter of Alcantara, "who 
for forty years never slept more than an hour and a half in 
the twenty-four, and then in a sitting posture, with his head 
against a wooden peg in the wall ;" who ate in general only 
every third day ; and who looked, she says, as if he were 
made of the roots of trees. 2 

Her mysticism appears in her accounts of her visions and 
the descriptions of the four kinds of prayer. On one occa- 
sion, she tells us, she was favored with a brief experience 
of the place she merited in hell : — a kind of low oven, pitch 
dark, miry, stinking, full of vermin, where sitting and lying 
were alike impossible ; where the walls seemed to press in 
upon the sufferer — crushing, stifling, burning ; where in 
solitude the lost nature is its own tormentor, tearing itself 
in a desperate misery, interminable, and so intense, that all 
she had endured from racking disease was delightful in com- 
parison. 

At another time, while smitten for five hours together 
with intolerable pains, the Lord was pleased to make her 
understand that she was tempted by the devil, and she saw 
him at her side like a very horrible little negro, gnashing 
his teeth at her. At last she contrived to sprinkle some holy 
water on the place where he was. That moment he and her 
pains vanished together, and her body remained as though 
she had been severely beaten. . . . The said devil 

1 Vaughan : loc. cit., 2, pp. 154. 2 Vaughan: loc. cit., 2, pp. 157. 



94 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

squatted one day on her breviary, and at another time had 
all but strangled her. She once saw with the eye of her 
soul, two devils encompassing, with their meeting horns, 
the neck of a sinful priest ; and at the funeral of a man who 
had died without confession, a whole swarm of devils tear- 
ing and tossing the body and sporting in the grave. 

Much more numerous, however, were her visions of celes- 
tial objects. "Being one day in prayer," she tells us, " our 
Lord was pleased to show me his sacred hands, of excessive 
and indescribable beauty ; afterwards his divine face, and 
finally, at mass, all his most sacred humanity." At one of 
his appearances, he drew out with his right hand the nail 
which transfixed his left, some of the flesh following it. 
Three times did she behold in her raptures the most sublime 
of all visions — the humanity of Christ in the bosom of the 
Father ; very clear to her mind but impossible to explain. 
While reciting the Athanasian Creed the mystery of the Trin- 
ity was unfolded to her with unutterable wonderment and 
comfort. Our Lord paid her one day the compliment of 
saying, that if He had not already created heaven He would 
have done so for her sake alone. 

"When reciting the hours one day with the nuns, my 
soul suddenly lapsed into a state of recollection, and appeared 
to me as a bright mirror, every part of which, back and 
sides, top and bottom, was perfectly clear. In the centre of 
this was represented to me Christ our Lord, as I am accus- 
tomed to see him. I seemed to see him in all the parts of my 
soul also, distinctly as in a mirror, and at the same time this 
mirror (I do not know how to express it) was all engraven 
in the Lord himself, by a communication exceeding amor- 
ous which I cannot describe. I know that this vision was a 
great advantage to me, and has been every time I have called 
it to mind, more especially after communion. I was given 
to understand, that when a soul is in mortal sin, this mirror 
is covered with a great cloud, and grows very dark, so that 
the Lord cannot be seen or represented in us, though He is 
always present as the Author of our being. In heretics, the 
mirror is, as it were, broken, which is much worse than to 
have it obscured." 1 

There are very many other visions recorded, but these 
will suffice to show her mental abnormality. The majority, 

1 Vaughan: loc. cit., 2, pp. 160 ff. 



Mysticism. 95 

if not all of them, can be paralleled in any of our insane asy- 
lums. The writer has interviewed several female patients 
in the Worcester Insane Hospital, who had both seen and 
conversed with Christ. They referred to Him as their Bride- 
groom, and in many other respects they were not unlike St. 
Theresa. That some sexual disturbance is at the bottom of 
such trances and hallucinations, the investigations of alien- 
ists leave no doubt. 1 

In her ' ' Life " St. Theresa gives us an account of her 
four degrees of prayer. "The first is Simple Mental 
Prayer, — fervent, inward, self -withdrawn ; not exclusive of 
some words, nor unaided by what the mystics called dis- 
cursive acts, etc., the consideration of facts and doctrines 
prompting to devotion. In this species there is nothing 
extraordinary. No mysticism, so far. 

Second Degree : The Prayer of Quiet called also Pure 
Contemplation. In this state the Will is absorbed, though 
the Understanding and memory may still be active in an 
ordinary way. Thus the nun may be occupied for a day or 
two in the usual religious services, in embroidering an altar- 
cloth, or dusting a chapel ; yet without the Will being en- 
gaged. That faculty is supposed to be, as it were, bound 
and taken up in God. This state is a supernatural one. 
Those who are conscious of it are to beware lest they suffer 
the unabsorbed faculties to trouble them. Yet they should 
not exert themselves to protract this 'recollection.' They 
should receive the wondrous sweetness as it comes, and en- 
joy it while it lasts, absolutely passive and tranquil. The 
devotee thus favored often dreads to move a limb, lest bodily 
exertion should mar the tranquility of the soul. But happiest 
are those who, as in the case just mentioned, can be Marys 
and Marthas at the same time. 

Third Degree : The Prayer of Union, called also Perfect 
Contemplation. In this prayer, not the Will only, but the 
Understanding and Memory also, are swallowed up in God. 
These . powers are not absolutely inactive, but we do not 
work them, nor do we know how they work. It is a kind 
of celestial frenzy — " a sublime madness," says Theresa. In 
such a transport she composed her ecstatic hymn, without 
the least exercise of the understanding on her part. At 

1 See also J. H. Leuba: Tendences Fondamentales des Mystiques 
Chretiens, Rev. Phil., July, 1902. 



96 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

this stage the contemplatist neither thinks nor feels as a 
human being, The understanding is stunned and struck 
dumb with amazement. The heart knows neither why it 
loves, nor what. All the functions of the mind are sus- 
pended. Nothing is seen, heard, or known. And where- 
fore this sudden blank? That for a brief space (which 
seems almost shorter than it really is) the living God may, 
as it were, take the place of the unconscious spirit — that a 
divine vitality may for a moment hover about the dead 
soul, and then vanish without a trace ; restoring the mystic 
to humanity again, to be heartened and edified, perhaps for 
years to come, by the vague memory of that glorious 
nothingness. 

Some simple nun might ask, ' how do you know that God 
did so plenarily enter into you, if you were conscious of 
nothing whatever ? ' 

' My daughter,' replied the Saint, ' I know it by an infal- 
lible certainty that God alone bestows.' 

Fourth Degree : The Prayer of Kapture or Ecstasy. This 
state is the most privileged, because the most unnatural of 
all. The bodily as well as mental powers are sunk in a 
divine stupor. You can make no resistance, as you may 
possibly, to some extent, in the Prayer of the Union. On 
a sudden your breath and strength begin to fail ; the eyes 
are involuntarily closed, or, if open, cannot distinguish sur- 
rounding objects ; the hands are rigid ; the whole body 
cold." 1 

She likens these four degrees of prayer to the four ways 
of watering the soul-garden. "Our soul," she says, "is 
like a garden, rough and unfruitful, out of which God 
plucks the weeds, and plants flowers, which we have to 
water by prayer. There are four ways of doing this : First, 
by drawing the water from a well ; this is the earliest and 
most laborious process. Secondly, by a water-wheel, which 
has its rim hung round with little buckets. Third, by caus- 
ing a stream to flow through it. Fourth, by rain from 
heaven." 2 In the last method the care of the garden is 
given over entirely to God, while we remain perfectly pas- 
sive. While perplexed over the difficulty of adequately 
expressing this state she heard the voice of the Lord saying, 

1 Vaughan : loc. cit., 2, pp. 168 f. 
2 Inge: Christian Mysticism, pp. 220. 



Mysticism. 97 

' « She (the soul) unmakes herself, my daughter, to bring 
herself closer to Me. It is no more she that lives but I. 
As she cannot comprehend what she sees, understanding she 
ceases to understand." This is Quietism of the deepest dye ; 
as blank as that for which Molinos, her follower, had to die 
in a dungeon, and Fenelon and Mme. Guj^on, were con- 
demned and cruelly persecuted. 

Of ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, her friend and fellow- 
workman, we shall here give only his account of the mys- 
tical journey of the soul to the Divine union through three 
stages of Night. In the First Night the senses and desires 
are lulled to sleep by ascetic means. "One desire only 
doth God allow — that of obeying Him, and carrying the 
Cross." "When thou dwellest upon anything, thou hast 
ceased to cast thyself upon the All." "If thou will keep 
anything with the All, thou hast not thy treasure simply in 
God." "Empty thy spirit of all created things, and thou 
wilt walk in the Divine light, for God resembles no created 
thing." 1 

In the Second Night, or the Night of the Spirit, the dark- 
ness is much blacker, in fact it is the deepest darkness to be 
experienced. The sufferings of the body and soul are un- 
bearable. "You seem to descend, God-abandoned, alive 
into Hell. Make no resistance ; utter no cry for comfort. 
Solace is a Tantalus' bough, which will wave itself away as 
you stretch forth your hand. Acquiesce in all : be in your 
desertion as absolutely passive as in your rapture. So, 
from the bright glassy edge and summit of this awful fall, 
you shoot down helpless, blind, and dizzy, — down through 
the surging cataract, among the giant vapor columns, amid 
the eternal roar, to awake at the boiling foot, and find that 
you yet live, in your tossing shallop, or rather, you no 
longer, for you yourself are dead — so much mere ballast in 
the bottom of the boat : a divine and winged Radiance has 
taken your place, who animates rather than steers, guiding, 
in your stead, by mysterious impulse." 2 Indeed, so dead 
must the soul strive to become in this night that it must fly 
from all supernatural manifestations (visions, voices, etc.), 
" without examining whether they be good or evil," for they 
may disturb the perfect sleep of the soul. 

In the Third Night, Memory and Will perish. The soul 

1 Inge : loc. ctt.,.pp. 225. 2 Vaughan : loc. cit., 2, pp. 187. 

7 



98 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

floats corpse-like on the waters of Lethe. The sense of time 
and space is lost ; the feelings, the intellect, the emotions 
are dead ; the personality has completely evaporated ; in 
brief the patient is a perfect blank. But fortunately this 
complete annihilation is only transitory. The soul after 
passing through this state is regenerated and becomes one 
with God, and God one with it. Now the patient becomes 
infallible for he is no longer human, but divine. — Such is 
the teaching of his "Mount Carmel" and the "Obscure 
Night." 

This great, mad mystic and ascetic travelled the negative 
road to its very end without even once glancing to the right 
or left. The world to him was along, dark vestibule through 
which he hurried as rapidly as possible to his God. Grim 
death had no terror for him. It was rather a much desired 
boon, a means to a happy end, and in this respect he was not 
unlike many other mystics who lived to die and died to live. 

There are at least three great Quietists, MIGUEL DE 
MOLINOS, FENELON, and Mme. GUYON. But these 
need not detain us as their quietism, though more temperate 
and perfect, is very similar to that of St. Theresa and St. 
John of the Cross. We have not yet passed from the neg- 
ative and morbidly introspective mysticism of the Roman 
Church, but when we return to Germany again we find that 
a marvellous change has taken place since the days of Tau- 
ler. Evidences of Luther's presence and activity meet us 
on every hand. The Roman Church lies a mouldering ruin, 
over which Protestantism proudly rears its head ; the Bible 
has been translated into German, and its teachings made the 
common property of all, the lowest as well as the highest ; 
the doctrine of justification by faith has been preached and 
accepted ; and the Scriptures, instead of the Schoolmen or 
the Church, have become the standard of Christianity. The 
new mystical weeds which have just sprung up — Carlstadt, 
Sebastian Frank, Schwenkenfeld, Weigel, Storch, Thomas, 
Stiibner, Miinzer, and others have been crushed under foot, 
and the road to truth is clear once more. But the seeds of 
mysticism are very fertile, and can accommodate themselves 
to almost any soil and climate. We would naturally expect 
the birth of Protestantism to be the death of Mysticism, but 
it was not so. Old mysticism was dead, but its soul trans- 
migrated into a higher form, known as Protestant or positive 
mysticism. The Theopath became Theosoph. The Catho- 



Mysticism. 99 

lie mystic, as we have seen, endeavored, by unmaking or an- 
nihilating himself, to return to the source from which he 
sprang through sin. The world was a prison house ; and 
everything in it — his body, relatives, friends, etc., were mere 
chains and bars which prevented him from returning to his 
God. God was the great All, everything else was nothing, 
or sin, which is worse than nothing. The highest knowl- 
edge was absolute ignorance ; the greatest truth, a perfect 
blank. The Protestant mystic, on the other hand, endeav- 
ored to attain the same end by opposite means ; by enlarg- 
ing and expanding his self to the fullest possible extent, so 
that it could sympathize, be in harmony with, and under- 
stand all things in nature from * * the little flower in the 
cranny wall" to the countless stars which twinkle so myste- 
riously in the firmament above. The world is not a filthy, 
loathsome dungeon, but the beautiful temple and garden of 
God, in which he dwells, and in which He has lovingly 
placed us to share His delights with Him. Everything is 
pregnant with His Divine Spirit, and the more objects and 
creatures we love and understand, and are en rapport with, 
the more of God have we in our souls. God is to be found, 
not by escaping from the world, but by entering into it with 
our whole soul. Knowledge is not ignorance, but Divine 
wisdom, and truth instead of being a cipher is the very full- 
ness of the universe. The world, said Paracelsus, was his 
book, whose leaves were continents and seas, whose para- 
graphs were provinces, and whose letters were plants, stones, 
and the living things of every clime. 

The difference between the two is, therefore, a difference 
of view point and method. Both have the same object 
in view, both yearn after union with God, but they travel 
in opposite directions and in different vehicles, so to 
speak. 

In the sudden intoxicating rush for knowledge, however, 
flighty imagination, and not calm reason, took the lead. It 
has always been thus — poetry precedes philosophy and sci- 
ence, astrology astronomy, alchemy chemistry, and so on. 
And this is true in particular as well as in general. Evolu- 
tion repeats itself, more or less rapidly and abbreviatedly in 
every new era of advancement. In the era of which we are 
now writing, subtle fancy had to have her play before sober 
truth could be arrived at. The old conceit of Plotinus, that 
the universe was a huge living organism with a kind of sym- 



100 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

pathetic system of which man was the heart, was revived 
and still further elaborated by the Theosophists. Alchem- 
ists, Astrologers, Magicians, and Theurgists sprang up like 
mushrooms, and were consulted by emperors and nobles as 
well as by peasant women. The mental condition of the 
times was as irrational and chaotic, but with more excuse, 
as it is to-day among the believers in Christian Science, Tel- 
epathy, Spiritualism, Clairvoyance, and all the other count- 
less 4 isms.' The Cabbalists, anticipating our Mediums, 
conversed frequently with the spirits of the great dead, some- 
times with the potentates of heaven, and discoursed fluently 
on the nature and character of God ; the Theosophists main- 
tained that man was a small edition of the universe, a micro- 
cosm, containing within him a miniature copy of everything 
in the macrocosm, and therefore, he who understood man 
perfectly, knew the outlines, at least, of all that there was 
to be known of God and the universe ; the psychologists 
told their credulous hearers that man drew his life from the 
sun, that mental and physical development was determined 
by the moon, that imagination was the gift of Mercury, an- 
ger the curse of Mars, and so on * ad libitum.' A few quo- 
tations from PARACELSUS, who, compared with the other 
mystics of his day, must be regarded as a great reformer, 
will show the state of scientific thought of this period. 

"All things — even metals, stones, and meteors — have 
sense and imagination, and a certain 'fiducial' knowledge of 
God in them. 

"The arctic pole draws water by its axle tree, and these 
waters break forth again at the axle tree of the antarctic 
pole. 

"Earthquakes and thunder are the work of demons or 
angels. 

" The lightnings without thunder are, as it were, the fall- 
ing flowers of the * aestival ' stars. 

"Hail and snow are the fruits of the stars, proceeding 
from them as flowers and blossoms from herb or tree. 

"Night is, in reality, brought on by the influence of 
dark stars, which ray out darkness, as the others light. 

"The moon, planets, and stars, are of the same quality 
with the lustrous precious stones of our earth, and of such 
a nature, that wandering spirits of the air see in them things 
to come, as in a magic mirror ; and hence their gift of 
prophecy. 



ieism. 101 

"In addition to the terrestrial, man has a sidereal body, 
which stands in connection with the stars. When, as in 
sleep, this sidereal body is more free than usual from the 
elements, it holds converse with the stars, and may acquire 
a knowledge of future events." 1 

Of all the theosophists, none are so famous or more 
original than the queer little Gorlitz shoemaker JACOB 
BOEHME or BEHMEN, around whom philosophers and 
savants flocked to learn the secrets of the Great Unknown. 
Possessed of a temperament similar to Geo. Fox's, he early 
found the bareness and coldness of the teachings of the 
clergy, their bigotry, servility, and licentiousness extremely 
repugnant to him. Protestantism had already degenerated, 
and Luther and Melanchthon were quoted as infallible au- 
thorities on all scriptural questions. The Articles of Faith 
superseded the Bible itself. Freedom of thought was again 
a thing of the past. The free and mystical spirit of Boehme 
could not rest content under such conditions. Bible in 
hand he wandered about in a melancholy mood, and was 
made still more miserable by the bitter contentions among 
the clergy, and the sinful lives of the laity. He sought 
hard for the truth which would give peace to his troubled 
soul. At last his prayer was answered from on high, as he 
believed. One day, in his twenty-fifth year, as he sat gaz- 
ing abstractedly on the dazzling light reflected from a tin 
vessel, he fell into a trance which lasted seven days, and in 
which the mystery of creation, of the Trinity, and all the 
secrets of nature were revealed to him. Ten years later he 
fell into another trance in which he saw with perfect clear- 
ness all that was dim and confused in the former. To guard 
against forgetting anything which had been revealed to him, 
he jotted down his impressions as rapidly as he could. The 
result was "a disjointed, ungrammatical, and unreadable 
book," which he called the Aurora. 

In the following letter written to his friend, Caspar Lin- 
dern, twenty-one years later, he gives an account of his 
vision, of his writing the Aurora, its fate, etc. 

"I saw and knew the Being of all Beings, the Byss 
(Grund) and the Abyss (Abgrund) : also the birth of the 
Holy Trinity ; the origin and primal state of this world, 
and of all creatures through the Divine Wisdom. I knew 

1 Vaughan : loc. cit., 2, pp. 70. 



102 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

and saw in myself all the three worlds, — t. e. (1), the divine 
angelic or paradisiacal world ; (2) the dark world as the 
original of nature, as to the fire ; and (3) this external vis- 
ible world, as a creation and outbirth, or as a substance 
spoken forth out of the two inner spiritual worlds. More- 
over, I saw and had cognizance of the whole Being in good 
and in evil — how each had its origin in the other, and how 
the Mother did bring forth ; — and this all moved me not 
merely to the height of wonder, but made me to rejoice 
exceedingly. 

' ' Soon it came strongly into my mind that I should set the 
same down in writing, for a memorial, albeit I could hardly 
compass the understanding thereof in my external man, so 
as to write it on paper. I felt that with such great myste- 
ries I must set to work as a child that goes to school. In 
my inward man I saw it well, as in a great deep, for I saw 
right through as into a chaos in which everything lay 
wrapped, but the unfolding thereof I found impossible. 

1 'Yet from time to time it opened itself within me, as in a 
growing plant. For the space of twelve years I carried it 
about within me — was, as it were, pregnant therewith, feel- 
ing a mighty inward impulse, before I could bring it forth 
in any external form ; till afterwards it fell upon me like a 
bursting shower that hitteth wheresoever it lighteth, as it 
will. So it was with me, and whatsoever I could bring into 
outwardness that I wrote down. 

"Thereafter the sun shone on me a good while, yet not 
steadily and without interval, and when that light had with- 
drawn itself I could scarce understand my own work. And 
this was to show man that his knowledge is not his own, 
but God's, and that God in man's soul knoweth what and 
how he will." He entrusted his writing to a friend and saw 
nothing more of it until three years later when some learned 
men sent him copies of it and exhorted him not to bury his 
talent. ' ' To this counsel my outward reason was in no 
wise willing to agree, having suffered so much already. My 
reason was very weak and timorous at that time, the more 
so as the light of grace had then been withdrawn from me 
some while, and did but smoulder within, like a hidden fire. 
So I was filled with trouble. Without was contempt, within, 
a fiery driving ; and what to do I knew not, till the breath 
of the Most High came to my help again, and awoke within 
me a new life. Then it was that I attained to a better style 



Mysticism, 103 

of writing, likewise to a deeper and more thorough knowl- 
edge. I could reduce all better to outward form — as, in- 
deed, my book concerning The Threefold Life through the 
Three Principles doth fully show, and as the godly reader 
whose heart is opened will see. 

" So, therefore, I have written, not from book learning, 
or the doctrine and science of men, but from my own book 
which was opened within me, — the book of the glorious 
image of God, which it was vouchsafed to me to read : 'tis 
therein I have studied — as a child in its mother's house, that 
sees what its father doth, and mimics the same in its child's 
play. I need no other book than this. 

' ' My book has but three leaves — the three principles of 
Eternity. Therein I find all that Moses and the prophets, 
Christ and his apostles have taught. Therein I find the foun- 
dation of the world and all mystery, — yet not I but the 
spirit of the Lord doth it, in such measure as he pleaseth. 

"For hundreds of times have I prayed Him that if my 
knowledge were not for His glory and the edifying of my 
brethren, he will take it from me, only keeping me in His 
love. But I have found that with all my earnest entreaty 
the fire within me did but burn the more, and it is in this 
glow, and in this knowledge that I have produced my works. 
. Let no man conceive of me more highly than he 
here seeth, for the work is none of mine ; I have it only in 
that measure vouchsafed me of the Lord ; I am but his in- 
strument wherewith He doeth what He will. This, I say, 
my dear friend, once for all, that none may seek in me one 
other than I am, as though I were a man of high skill and 
intellect, whereas I live in weakness and childhood, and the 
simplicity of Christ. In that child's work which He hath 
given me is my pastime and my play ; 't is there I have my 
delight, as in a pleasure garden where stand many glorious 
flowers ; therewith will I make myself glad awhile, till such 
time as I regain the flowers of Paradise in the new man." 1 

The nature of Boehme's trance was, perhaps, predeter- 
mined by the writings of SCHWENKFELD, WEIGEL, and 
PARACELSUS, with which he was acquainted. From 
Weigel he learns to * ' withdraw into himself and await, in 
total passivity, the incoming of the Divine Word, whose 
light rewards unto the babe what is hidden from the wise 

iVaughan: loc. cit., 2, pp. 83-86. 



104 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

and prudent. By the same writer he is reminded that he 
lives in God, and taught that if God also dwell in him, then 
is he even here in Paradise — the state of regenerate souls. 
Paracelsus extols the power of faith to penetrate the myster- 
ies of nature, and shows him how a plain man, with his Bible 
only, if he be filled with the Spirit and carried out of him- 
self by divine communication, may seem to men a fool, but 
is in truth more wise than all the doctors. Weigel says that 
man, as body, soul, and spirit, belongs to three worlds — the 
terrestrial, the astral, and the celestial. Both Weigel and 
Paracelsus teach him the doctrine of microcosm. They as- 
sure him that as divine illumination reveals to him the mys- 
teries of his own being, he will discern proportionately the 
secrets of external nature. They teach that all language, art, 
science, handicraft, exist potentially in man ; that all ap- 
parent acquisition from without is in reality a revival and 
evolution of that which is within. 1 

But the most important heritage of all was the doctrine of 
Development by Contraries. " According to this theory, 
God manifests Himself in opposites. The peace of Unity 
develops itself into the strife of the Manifold. All things 
consist in Yea and Nay. The light must have shadow, day 
night, laughter tears, health sickness, hope fear, good evil, 
or they would not be what they are. Only by resistance, 
only in collision, is the spark of vitality struck out, is power 
realized, and progress possible." 2 

It is in this doctrine that Boehme finds his long sought for 
explanation of the source and being of evil. Evil, says 
Boheme now, is the contrary of good ; without it we could 
not know the good. Good and evil are in all things, the 
angels and devils are both in God, both contend for the 
prize — the human soul — and the victor receives it. With- 
out either combatant there could be no strife, no reward or 
punishment, no virtue, no vice, no life. 

Starting with the fallacious premise that good and evil are 
complementary, he reaches conclusions which would be dear 
to the heart of every born criminal, and which he himself 
would be the first to reject. His explanation of man's rela- 
tion to the universe he derives from Weigel. In man, he 
says, there are three gates open on the three worlds ; the 
spiritual, sidereal, and terrestrial, which he intersects as a 

1 Vaughan: loc. cit., 2, pp. 90. a Vaughan: loc. cit., 2, pp. 92. 



Mysticism. 105 

line from the centre to the outermost of three concentric 
circles. On this line he travelled back and forth. " When 
recipient of celestial truth he is near the centre ; when he 
strives to give utterance and form to such intimations, he 
approaches the circumference." 

His theory of the Trinity is that a desire springs forth 
from the abyss of the Godhead, which is the Father. The 
object and realization of the desire is the Son, and " the bond 
and result of this reciprocal love is the Holy Spirit." His 
description of the seven " Forms of Life," or " Active 
Principles," or " Fountain Spirits," or "Mothers of Exist- 
ence ;" and his account of creation are quite novel and in- 
teresting, but these need not detain us. 

Of the conflicting estimates both of the man and his 
teaching, we have already spoken in the beginning of this 
chapter. His mysticism was of the primitive type — a prod- 
uct of some nervous disturbance, but it was colored by the 
teachings of more philosophical mystics. Certain it is, that 
he supplied a great need in his day, as is seen from the 
facts that his works were very widely circulated, and he 
himself held in the highest esteem by the learned of the 
land. His best known English disciple and exponent is 
WM. LAW. 

Hitherto we have dealt with mystics who were vouchsafed 
only a few glimpses into the spirit world, and still fewer in- 
terviews with their Lord, or some of the angels. Now we 
have to mention one who, for nearly thirty years of his 
earthly life, was a constant visitor to the Heavenly King- 
dom and a friend of its inhabitants. 

SWEDENBORG, unlike Boehme, gives us accurate and 
minute accounts of the characters, lives, and customs of the 
beings with whom he has lived on the most familiar and 
neighborly terms the greater portion of his life. According 
to his own testimony, he understood and could use the lan- 
guage of the inhabitants of the other world ; he frequently 
visited their schools, churches, libraries, and homes : was 
on many occasions the honored guest of a social gathering, 
and not infrequently gave instruction to the simple-minded 
angels concerning the sinful and deceitful creatures of this 
world. 

"I have been called to a holy office," he writes in one of 
his letters, "by the Lord Himself, who most graciously 
manifested himself to me, his servant, in the year 1743, 



106 Pathologieal Aspects of Religions. 

when He opened my sight to a view of the spiritual world, 
and granted me the privilege of conversing with the spirits, 
and angels, which I enjoy to this day. From that time, I 
began to print and publish various arcana that have been 
seen by me, or revealed to me ; as respecting heaven and 
hell, the state of man after death, the true worship of God, 
the spiritual sense of the Word, with many other most im- 
portant matters conducive to salvation and true wisdom." 
Again, in the preface to his " Arcana Coelestia," he writes : 
" Of the Lord's divine mercy, it has been granted me now 
for several years to be constantly and uninterruptedly in 
company with spirits and angels, hearing them converse 
with each other, and conversing with them. Hence it has 
been permitted me to hear and see stupendous things in the 
other life, which have never before come to the knowledge 
of any man, nor entered his imagination. I have there been 
instructed concerning different kinds of spirits, and the 
state of souls after death ; concerning hell, or the lamentable 
state of the unfaithful ; concerning heaven, or the most 
happy state of the faithful ; and particularly concerning the 
doctrine of faith which is acknowledged throughout all 
heaven." 

But already in his childhood, from his fourth to his tenth 
year, he often revealed things in his discourse which filled 
his parents with astonishment, and made them declare at 
times, that certainly the angels spoke through his mouth. 1 

Like St. Theresa, Geo. Fox, and Geo. Sand, his early 
thoughts turned upon religious topics. "From my sixth 
to my twelfth year," he writes, " it was my greatest delight 
to converse with the clergy concerning faith ; to whom I 
often observed, that charity or love is the life of faith ; and 
that this vivifying charity or love is no other than the love 
of one's neighbor ; that God vouchsafes this faith to every 
one ; but that it is adopted by those only who practice that 
charity." 2 

He came of sturdy Norse stock, and was gifted with a 
powerful mind which anticipated many important discov- 
eries of later centuries in mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, 
and anatomy. He lived a pure, serene, and scholarly life, 
had the widest interests, and was in every respect an in- 

1 See Wm. White : Life and Writings of Swedenborg. 

2 Wm. White : loc. cit., p. 23. 



icism. 107 

spiring and estimable character. Though a scientist of the 
first rank, he is principally known to the world as a religious 
mystic, and as such the opinions concerning him are con- 
flicting. He has both been praised as one who * * is not to 
be measured by whole colleges of ordinary scholars," and 
derided as a mere madman. There is, however, much truth 
in Tennemann's statement : " If he must needs be mad, there 
is a rare method in his madness ; and if the world insists on 
his being a visionary it must admit that his visions are some- 
thing anomalous, in their systematic and mathematical 
form." 1 

We confess we have no faith in his Seership, that we 
cannot help believing that his visions were the product of 
some peculiar mental aberration of long standing. Indeed, 
we are told that from his early childhood, "when on his 
knees at prayer, and afterwards when engaged in profound 
meditation, he found that his natural respiration was for the 
time suspended." However, in view of the recent pains- 
taking researches of the Psychical Research Society, we can 
no longer, whatever our individual bias may be, brush him 
or his works aside with a smile or a sneer. Like Spinoza, 
he was a sincere, courageous, God-intoxicated man, and to 
compare him with our modern, money-making mystics and 
spiritualists is, we might almost say, to commit sacrilege. 

It is impossible here to outline or epitomize his religious 
writings which cover more than two score large volumes, 
but the following extracts from his work entitled Heaven 
and Hell, considered one of his most charming productions, 
will give the reader some conception of the nature of the en- 
tire work and enable him to judge of the sanity of the man 
and the value of his teachings. 

The title page reads: "Heaven and its Wonders, the 
World of Spirits, and Hell ; being a relation of things heard 
and seen." Heaven, the World of Spirits, and Hell are the 
three great regions, he tells us, into which the spiritual 
world is divided. Heaven is the Divine Sphere of the Lord. 
This Divine Sphere is love to him and charity towards our 
neighbor. There are three Heavens consisting of innumer- 
able societies of angels ; every society is a heaven on a 
smaller scale, and every angel is a heaven in miniature. The 
whole heaven, viewed collectively, is in form as one man, 

1 Manual of the History of Philosophy. 



108 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

and every angel has a perfect human form. There is a close 
correspondence between all things belonging to Heaven, i. 
e., the spiritual world, and all things belonging to man and 
earth, i. e., the natural world. Things in the natural world 
exist and subsist from their prototypes in the spiritual world. 

"Since heaven, as a whole, resembles one man, and is, 
also, a Divine spiritual man in the greatest form, even with 
respect to shape, it necessarily has the same distinctions, as 
to members and parts, as man has, bearing similar names. 
The angels also know in what member this or the other so- 
ciety is situated ; which they express by saying that this 
society is in the member, or in some province of the head — 
that, in the member, or in some province of the loins ; and 
so with respect to the others. In general, the supreme or 
third heaven composes the head as far as the neck ; the mid- 
dle or second heaven composes the breast or body to the 
loins and knees ; and the ultimate or first heaven composes 
the legs and feet down to the soles ; and also the arms down 
to the fingers ; for the arms and hands are parts of the ulti- 
mates of man, though placed on the sides. Hence, again, 
it is evident why there are three heavens. 

" That angels are human forms or men, I have seen a thou- 
sand times ; for I have conversed with them as one man 
does with another, sometimes with one alone and sometimes 
with many in company ; nor did I ever see in them anything 
differing, as to their form, from man. I have sometimes 
wondered at finding them such ; and lest it should be ob- 
jected that I was deceived by some fallacy or some vision- 
ary fancy, it has been granted to me to see them when I was 
wide awake, or when all my bodily senses were in activity, 
and I was in a state to perceive everything clearly. I have 
also frequently told them that men in the Christian world are 
in such gross ignorance respecting angels and spirits, as to 
suppose them to be minds without a form, or mere thoughts, 
of which they had no other idea than as something ethereal 
possessing a vital principle ; and as they thus attribute to 
them nothing belonging to man except a faculty of thinking, 
they imagine that they cannot see, being without eyes ; nor 
hear, being without ears ; nor speak, having neither mouth 
nor tongue." 

" It has also been granted me to see an angel of the in- 
most heaven. His face was more bright and resplendent 
than those of the angels of the lower heavens. I examined 



icism. 109 

him, and I can declare that he had the human form in its 
utmost perfection." 

" Since man is both a heaven and a world in miniature, 
formed after the image of heaven and the world at large, he, 
also, has belonging to him both a spiritual world and a nat- 
ural world. The interiors, which belong to his mind and 
have relation to his understanding and will, constitute his 
spiritual world; but his exteriors, which belong to his body, 
and have references to its senses and actions, constitute his 
natural world. Whatever, therefore, exists in his natural 
world, that is in his body, with its senses and actions, by 
derivation from his spiritual world, that is from his mind, 
with his understanding and will, is called its correspondent." 

"In the Grand Man, who is heaven, they that are sta- 
tioned in the head are in the enjoyment of every good above 
all others ; for they are in the enjoyment of love, peace, in- 
nocence, wisdom, and intelligence; and thence of joy and 
happiness. These have an influx into the head, and what- 
ever appertains to the head with man, and corresponds 
thereto. In the Grand Man, who is heaven, they that are 
stationed in the breast, are in the enjoyment of the good of 
charity and faith : their influx, also, with man, is into the 
breast, to which they correspond. But in the Grand Man, 
or heaven, they that are stationed in the loins, and in the 
organs belonging to generation therewith connected, are they 
who are eminently grounded in conjugal love. They who 
are stationed in the feet are grounded in the ultimate good 
of heaven, which is called spiritual-natural good. They who 
are in the arms and hands are in the power of truth derived 
from good. They who are in the eyes are those eminent for 
understanding. They who are in the ears are in attention 
and obedience. They in the nostrils, are those distinguished 
for perception. They in the mouth and tongue, are such as 
excel in discoursing from understanding and perception. 
They in the kidneys, are such as are grounded in truth, of a 
searching, distinguishing and castigatory character. They 
in the liver, pancreas, and spleen are grounded in the puri- 
fication of good and truth by various methods. So with 
those in the other members and organs. All have an influx 
into the similar parts of man, and correspond to them. The 
influx of heaven takes place into the functions and uses of 
the members ; and their uses, being from the spiritual 
world, invest themselves with forms by means of such mate- 



110 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

rials as are found in the material world and present them- 
selves in effects. Hence there is a correspondence between 
them." In sections 108-111 he tells us that the instincts 
and activities of bees, caterpillars, the fowls of the air, the 
animals, and the development of minute seeds into trees 
which bear fruit — all these things proceed from the spiritual 
world in which exist their prototypes. . ." 

" The Lord appears as a sun, not in heaven, but far above 
the heavens ; nor yet overhead, or in the zenith, but before 
the faces of the angels in a medium altitude. He appears at 
a great distance in two situations, one before the right eye 
and the other before the left. Before the right eye He ap- 
pears exactly like a sun, as if by the same sort of fire, and 
of the same magnitude as the sun of this world ; but before 
the left eye He does not appear as a sun but as a moon, of 
similar but more brilliant whiteness, and of a similar magni- 
tude with the moon of our earth, etc." . . . Angels 
pass through changes of state for three reasons, chief of 
which is to break the monotony. " The First (reason) is 
that the enjoyment of life and of heaven which they experi- 
ence, resulting from the love and wisdom which they receive 
from the Lord, would by degrees be thought little of did 
they abide in it continually ; as is experienced by those who 
are perpetually surrounded by delightful and agreeable ob- 
jects without variety." 

Angels wear clothes which correspond to their intelligence, 
that is, the higher the intelligence, the brighter the color of 
the clothes. In the inmost heaven, however, the angels are 
naked. " The garments of the angels do not merely appear 
as garments, but are such in reality. This is evident from 
these circumstances : that they not only see them but also 
feel them ; that they possess many of them ; that they put 
them off and put them on ; and that when they are not in 
use they lay them by, and, when in use, they take them 
again. That they wear different dresses, I have witnessed a 
thousand times. I inquired whence they obtained them, 
and they told me from the Lord ; that they receive them as 
gifts, and that they sometimes are clothed with them, with- 
out knowing themselves how it has been done." 

Angels have dwellings and mansions. "Whenever I 
have orally conversed with the angels, I have been with them 
in their habitations. These are exactly like the habitations 
on earth which are called houses, but more beautiful. . They 



Mysticism. Ill 

contain chambers, with drawing rooms, and bedchambers in 
great numbers : they have courts to them, and are encom- 
passed with gardens, flower beds, and fields. Where the 
angels live together in societies, the habitations are contig- 
uous, one adjoining another, and arranged in the form of a 
city, with streets, roads, and squares, exactly like the cities 
on our earth. It has been granted me to walk through 
them, and to look about on all sides, and occasionally to 
enter the houses. This occurred to me when wide awake, 
my interior sight being open at the time." These cities and 
societies are ruled by governors ; the homes have masters 
and obedient servants. 

' ' The angels of each heaven do not dwell all together in 
one place, but are divided into larger and smaller societies, 
distant from each other according to the differences of the 
good of love and faith in which they are grounded, those 
who are grounded in similar good, forming one society. 
There is an infinite variety of kinds of good in the heavens ; 
and every angel is such in quality, as is the good belonging 
to him." 

"All angels who are of a similar quality associate with 
each other, and know each other though they may never 
have met before. "I have seen some (angels) who ap- 
peared to have been known to me from infancy whilst others 
seemed not known to me at all ; those whom I appeared to 
know were such as were in a state similar to that of my 
spirit ; but those whom I did not know were such whose 
state was dissimilar." Intercommunication between the so- 
cieties is established by means of intermediate angels. The 
societies are of different sizes, "the larger consist of myri- 
ads of angels, the smaller of several thousands, and the 
smallest of some hundreds." 

The angels go to church and hear sermons by preachers 
appointed by the Lord. He describes the outward appear- 
ance of the heavenly temples and their interior arrangement. 
He also gives a conversation he had with one of the preach- 
ers concerning the state of sanctity. 

The spiritual angels use in writing letters like our common 
Roman type ; while the celestial angels use a sort of Arabic 
or Hebrew alphabet. ' ' There was once sent to me from 
Heaven a bit of paper, on which were only written a few 
words in Hebrew characters ; and it was stated that every 
letter involved arcana of wisdom, these being contained in 



112 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

the inflections and curvatures of the letters, and thence also 
in the sounds. It hence was made evident to me what is 
meant by these words of the Lord: "Verily, I say unto 
you, till heaven and earth pass one jot or one tittle shall in 
no wise pass from the law." (Math. 5:18.) 

His explanation of ' ' the origin of the anxiety, grief of 
mind, and interior sadness, called melancholy," is quite 
amusing. "There are certain spirits," he says, "who are 
not yet in conjunction with hell, being as yet in their first 
state. . . . They love undigested and malignant sub- 
stances such as those of food when it lies corrupting in the 
stomach. They consequently are present where such sub- 
stances are to be found in man, because these are delightful 
to them ; and they there converse with one another from 
their own evil affection. The affection contained in their 
discourse thence enters the man by influx ; and if it is op- 
posed to the man's affection, he experiences melancholy, 
sadness, and anxiety ; whereas, if it agrees with his affection, 
he becomes gay and cheerful. Those spirits appear near the 
stomach, some to the left and some to the right, some below 
and some above, with different degrees of proximity and 
remoteness ; thus they take various stations, according to 
their affections which form their character. That such is 
the origin of anxiety of mind has been granted me to know 
and be assured of by much experience ; I have seen those 
spirits, I have heard them, I have felt the anxieties arising 
from them, and I have conversed with them, they were 
driven away, and my anxiety ceased ; they returned, and it 
returned ; and I was sensible of its increase and decrease 
according to their approximation and removal. Hence was 
made manifest to me the origin of the persuasion enter- 
tained by some, who do not know what conscience is by 
reason that they have none, when they attribute its pangs to 
a disordered state of the stomach." 

All children, those of wicked parents as well as those of 
pious ones, go to heaven and gradually develop into angels. 
Death makes no immediate change in the condition of the 
individuals ; infants, children, youths, middle-aged men, 
and old men are such when they enter the other world, but 
afterwards they are changed. As soon as infants reach 
heaven, which is immediately after their decease, they are 
delivered to the care of angels of the female sex — govern- 
esses, who in this world tenderly loved infants. Later they 



Mysticism. 113 

are transferred to another heaven, where they are instructed 
by masters. And so they advance, and become model 
young men and women. " What a delightful faith is this ! " 
cries Mr. White, one of his biographers. "Do not its 
beauty and rationality prove its truthfulness ? " 

He further tells us of the wise and the simple, the rich 
and the poor in heaven ; of marriages, and the occupations 
of angels ; of heavenly joy and happiness, and finally, of 
the immensity of heaven. The following are the paragraph 
captions of the remaining two sections of the book : 

Of the World of Spirits, and of the State of Man 
After Death. 

What the World of Spirits is ; That as to his interiors, 
every man is a Spirit; Of man's resuscitation from the 
dead, and entrance into eternal life ; That man after death 
is in perfect human form ; That man after death is possessed 
of every sense, and of all the memory, thought, and affec- 
tion that he had in the world ; and that he leaves nothing 
behind him but his terrestrial body ; That man, after death, 
is, in quality, such as his life had been in the world ; That 
the delights of the life of every one are turned, after death, 
into correspondent ones ; Of the first state of man after 
death ; Of the third state of man after death ; which is the 
state of instruction provided for those who go to heaven ; 
That no one attains heaven by an act of immediate mercy ; 
That it is not so difficult to live the life which leads to 
heaven as is commonly supposed. 

Of Hell. 

That the Lord governs the Hells ; That no one is cast into 
Hell by the Lord ; but that the spirit does it himself ; That 
all the inhabitants of the Hells are immersed in evils, and 
in falsities thence proceeding, originating in self-love and 
the love of the world ; What is meant by the fire of Hell, 
and what by the gnashing of teeth ; Of the profound wicked- 
ness, and direful arts, of infernal spirits ; Of the appear- 
ance, situation, and plurality of the hells ; Of the equilib- 
rium between heaven and hell ; That man is in the enjoyment 
of freedom, through the equilibrium that is maintained be- 
tween Heaven and Hell. 

8 



114 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

In a word, the other world corresponds both as a whole 
and in its smallest parts to our own, only that it is more 
beautiful and perfect. 

If his description of heaven and hell appears to us naive 
and childish, we recognize at the same time that it is bold, 
honest, and more logical and rational than the views enter- 
tained by the majority of believers in the Old and New Tes- 
taments. For these believe in immortality, in heaven and 
hell, and if they were honest with themselves and their re- 
ligion they would confess that such a heaven and hell as 
Swedenborg has described is the kind that lurks in their 
subconsciousness and the kind they hope for and dread. 
For the gossamer-like shades of the departed, " composed of 
some sort of ethereal vapor," floating in clouds and singing 
psalms to eternity, in which they believe he gives them liv- 
ing, tangible, active, and self-conscious men, women, and 
children. His angels, too, are true Biblical angels, such as 
spoke with Abraham and Lot, and wrestled with Jacob. 
Likewise, his heaven and hell are orderly universes, and not 
the irrational ' tohoo vavohoos ' of some Christians and 
Jews. From the artistic standpoint they are certainly supe- 
rior to Milton's, Dante's, or Jonathan Edwards'. 

In the words of Mr. White, " The general belief respect- 
ing the nature of life in heaven is so vague, and contains so 
much of clouds and psalm-singing, that it is not to be won- 
dered at that some free and daring spirits should openly 
avow their preference for the more substantial realities of 
this life." And he may, perhaps, be excused for adding, 
"Let us be thankful that man's utmost wants, in this re- 
spect, are satisfied in the writings of that New Church which 
the Lord is now raising up, and of which Swedenborg was 
the divinely-appointed herald." x 

Again, if Swedenborgianism is a childish* religion, it is as 
superior to the older forms of mysticism as a healthy child 
is superior to a decrepit and helpless general paralytic. The 
one may, perhaps, excite our good-natured laughter, but 
the other calls for our pity and tears. There is happily no 
morbid and vicious pessimism in his religion, no bitter mis- 
anthropy, no contempt for the world and all that sane men 
hold dear, no insane asceticism, no cruel lacerations of the 
body, no wild, Berserker rage, no longing for absolute ex- 

1 White : Life and Writings of Swedenborg, p. 108 



Mysticism. 115 

tinction. Children, according to Swedenborg, are not the 
abominable, depraved creatures Calvin would have us be- 
lieve, nor are they, as the Rev. Hammond tells us, little 
vipers ; on the contrary, they are precisely what parents 
and lovers of children think they are — little angels. And 
men and women are not all hideous devils reeking in filth 
and sin ; they are the children of the Grand Man, the Divine 
Humanity, who loves them with the tenderness of a father, 
and some of them at least are not far removed from the 
celestial beings who never tire singing the praises of the 
Lord, and doing his will. Man instead of being- demonized 
is thus deified. There is no unjust predestination theory in 
his writings ; all men are free to win either heaven or hell ; 
they reap what they have sown, and this is, of course, the 
highest justice as well as an inexorable law of evolution. 
Our earth is not a foul dungeon whose fruits are poisonous 
weeds ; nor is it a mere mirage. Our earth and the other 
planets are mirrors in which God reflects His glory. Like 
the rings in Lessing's ' ' Nathan der Weise " they are so like 
the original, the beautiful abode of God, that it is almost 
impossible to distinguish between them. And so we might 
go on and point out the many superiorities of this new reli- 
gion over the old inhuman and unnatural ones. But this is 
all that we can say for it. It is infinitely better than some 
of the religions we have considered, but it is not a religion 
which is likely to appeal to the multitude of healthy-minded, 
fully-developed adults. Those who subscribe to Swedenbor- 
gianism show but little religious development beyond the 
stage reached by primitive and very ancient peoples. 

That mysticism can thrive in almost any environment is 
evident from the fact that even pragmatic and phlegmatic 
England has given birth to several mystics both in religion 
and in poetry. Among religious mystics we find such 
names as WALTER HILTON and JULIANA OF NOR- 
WICH, both belonging to the Middle Ages. The latter, 
like many of the other mystics, was favored with a series of 
revelations in which she both saw and conversed with her 
Lord. For a long time she had yearned for a * * bodily 
sight " of the Crucified Jesus « ' like others that were Christ's 
lovers," and prayed for a grievous sickness almost unto 
death, which she hoped would remove her farther from the 
world and bring her nearer to God. Her prayers were an- 
swered. She fell sick, and in what were believed to be her 



116 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

dying moments, she beheld the living Christ in the crucifix 
held before her. After that she had frequent visions. 

In later times we meet with GEO. FOX, WM. LAW, 
the disciple of Boehme, JOHN SMITH, WHICHCOTE, 
CUDWORTH, CULVERWEL, and among the poets 
there are WORDSWORTH, BROWNING, TENNYSON, 
KINGSLEY, whose mystical poems are familiar to all. 

The early life of GEO. FOX, the founder of the Society 
of Friends or Quakers, was, as has already been said, strik- 
ingly like that of Jacob Boehme. He describes himself as 
* * knowing pureness and righteousness at eleven years of 
age." Vice and moral laxity were always odious to him, 
and caused him much mental suffering. " He fasted much, 
and walked abroad in solitary places. Taking his Bible, he 
sat in hollow trees or secluded spots, and often at night he 
walked alone in silent meditation." At one time he fell 
into a death-like trance which lasted fourteen daj^s, after 
which ''his sorrow began to abate, and with brokenness of 
heart and tears of joy he acknowledged the infinite love of 
God." Writing of the spiritual experiences in his twenty- 
fourth year he says : * ' Now was I come up in spirit, through 
the flaming sword, into the paradise of God. All things 
were new ; and all the creation gave another smell unto me 
than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing 
but pureness and innocency and righteousness, being re- 
newed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus ; so that I 
say 1 was come up to the state of Adam which he was 
in before he fell. The creation was opened to me, and it 
was showed me how all things had their names given them, 
according to their nature and virtue. And I was at a stand 
in my mind whether I should practice physic for the good 
of mankind, seeing the nature and virtues of the creatures 
were so opened to me by the Lord. But I was immediately 
taken up in spirit to see into another or more steadfast state 
than Adam's in innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus, 
that should never fall. And the Lord showed me that such 
as were faithful to Him in the power and light of Christ, 
should come up into that state in which Adam was before 
he fell ; in which the admirable works of creation, and the 
virtues thereof may be known, through the openings of that 
divine word of wisdom and power by which they were made. 
Great things did the Lord lead me into, and wonderful 
depths were opened unto me, beyond what can by words be 



Mysticism. 117 

declared ; but as people come into subjection to the Spirit 
of God, and grow up in the image and power of the Al- 
mighty, they may receive the word of wisdom that opens 
all things, and come to know the hidden unity in the Eternal 
Being." 1 

The anecdotes told of his wonderful prophetic, clairvoy- 
ant, and healing powers are as interesting and as authenti- 
cated as those told of Swedenborg. The etiology of his 
mysticism, like that of Boehme's, was the bitter disappoint- 
ment over the inability of religious teachers and scholars to 
administer relief to him in his temptations to despair. After 
travelling seven miles to a priest of reputed experience at 
Tamworth, he found him, he tells us, "but like an empty 
hollow cask." So, too, he tells us, were all who regarded 
churches as holy, and identified church-going with religion. 
' Steeple-houses ' are a sinful innovation, diffusing for the 
most part darkness rather than light. All formalism was 
not only useless but abominable. There is a Universal Light 
in men, given to them by God, which will shine only when 
they still the distractions of their senses, and withdraw within 
themselves, silently waiting for the manifestations of the 
divine presence. These manifestations he held were per- 
ceptible in violent quakings of the body. It is from this 
fact that his followers were nicknamed Quakers. 

In Browning's The Last Ride Together we have an excel- 
lent description of one who has begun to climb the Ladder 
of Perfection but wants the courage to continue. He clearly 
recognizes the vanity of life and all its strivings, catches 
faint glimmerings of the great Beyond but dares not free his 
soul of its earthly frame and send it soaring in quest of its 
Affinity, about which he knows as yet too little. 

Hush ! if you saw some western cloud 
All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed 
By many benedictions — sun's 
And moon's and evening star's at once — 
And so, you, looking and loving best, 
Conscious grew, your passion drew 
Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too, 
Down on you, near and yet more near, 
Till flesh must fade for heaven was here: — 
Thus leant she and lingered — joy and fear! 
Thus lay she a moment on my breast. 

1 Journal, Vol. 1, pp. 95. 



118 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

Then we began to ride. My soul 
Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll 
Freshening and fluttering in the wind. 
Past hopes already lay behind. 
What need to strive with a life awry ? 
Had I said that, had I done this, 
So might I gain, so might I miss. 
Might she have loved me ? just as well 
She might have hated, who can tell ! 
Where had I been now if the worst befell ? 
And here we are riding, she and I. 

Fail I alone, in words and deeds ? 

Why, all men strive and who succeeds ? 

We rode, it seemed my spirit flew, 

Saw other regions, cities new, 

As the world rushed by on either side. 

I thought, — All labor, yet no less 

Bear up beneath their unsuccess. 

Look at the end of work, contrast 

The petty done, the undone vast, 

This present of theirs with the hopeful past ! 

I hoped she would love me ; here we ride. 

What hand and brain went ever paired ? 
What heart alike conceived and dared ? 
What act proved all its thought had been f 
What will but felt the fleshy screen f 
We ride and I see her bosom heave. 
There 's many a crown for who can reach. 
Ten lines, a statesman's life in each! 
The flag stuck on a heap of bones, 
A soldier's doing! what atones? 
They scratch his name on the Abbey stones. 
My riding is better, by their leave. 

What does it all mean, poet ? Well, 
Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell 
What we felt only ; you expressed 
Tou hold things beautiful the best, 
And pace them in rhyme so, side by side. 
'T is something, nay 't is much : but then, 
Have you yourself what 's best for men ? 
Are you — poor, sick, old ere your time — 
Nearer one whit your own sublime 
Than we who have never turned a rhyme ! 
Sing, riding's a joy ! For me, I ride. 

And you, great sculptor — so, you gave 
A score of years to Art, her slave, 
And that 's your Venus, whence we turn 
To yonder girl that fords the burn ! 
You acquiesce, and shall I repine ? 
What, man of music, you grown gray 
With notes and nothing else to say, 
Is this your sole praise from a friend, 
11 Greatly his opera's strains intend, 
But in music we know how fashions end 1" 
I gave my youth ; but we ride, in fine. 



Mysticism. 119 

Who knows what 's fit for us ? Had fate 
Proposed bliss here should sublimate 
My being — had I signed the bond— 
Still one must lead some life beyond, 
Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried. 
This foot once planted on the goal, 
This glory-garland round my soul, 
Could I descry such f Try and test ! 
I sink back shuddering from the quest. 
Earth being so good, would heaven seem best f 
Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride. 

And yet— she has not spoke so long ! 
What if heaven be that, fair and strong 
At life's best, with our eyes upturned, 
Whither life's flower is first discerned, 
We, fixed so, ever should so abide ? 
What if we still ride on, we two, 
With life forever old yet new, 
Changed not in kind but in degree, 
The instant made eternity, — 
And heaven just prove that I and she 
Bide, ride together, forever ride ? * 

In Kabbi Ben Ezra he tells us, 

11 Then, welcome each rebuff 
That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go ! 
Be our joys three-parts pain ! 
Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 
Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never 
Grudge the throe ! 

" For thence,— a paradox 
Which comforts while it mocks, — 
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail ; 
What I aspired to be, 
And was not, comforts me ; 
A brute I might have been, but would not 
Sink i' the scale. 

u What is he but a brute 
Whose flesh hath soul to suit, 
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play ? 
To man, propose this test— 
Thy body at its best, 
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way ? " 

In other words, the very fact that our attainments fall far 
short of our aspirations proves the superiority of mind over 
matter, proves that somewhere there must be a higher and 
fuller life in which the soul, when released from the body, 
can satisfy all its desires. Tennyson describes a trance ex- 
perience of his own in the Ancient Sage. 

1 The italics are mine. 



120 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

"And more: my son! for more than once when I 
Sat all alone, revolving in myself 
The word that is the symbol of myself, 
The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, 
And passed into the Nameless, as a cloud 
Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs 
Were strange not mine — and yet no shade of doubt, 
But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self 
The gain of such large life as match'd with ours 
Were Sun to spark— unshadowable in words, 
Themselves but shadows of a shadow- world." 1 

And in the Higher Pantheism he gives expression to his 
Mysticism. 

The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains — 
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns ? 

Is not the Vision He ? tho 1 He be not that which He seems ? 
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams ? 

Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb, 

Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him ? . . . 

Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet- 
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. . . . 

And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see ; 
But if we could see and hear, this Vision— were it not He ? " 

Tennyson was from very early life subject to trances. In 
a letter to a friend he writes : * ' I have never had any reve- 
lations through anaesthetics ; but a kind of ' waking trance ' 
(this for lack of a better word) I have frequently had quite 
up from boyhood when I have been all alone. This has 
often come upon me through repeating my own name to 
myself silently, till all at once as it were out of the intensity 
of the consciousness of individuality the individuality itself 
seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being — and 
this not a confused state but the clearest of the clearest, the 
surest of the surest, utterly beyond words — where death 
was an almost laughable impossibility — the loss of person- 
ality (if so it were) seeming no extinction but the only true 
life. 

" 1 am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said 
the state is utterly beyond words ? But in a moment when I 
come back to my normal state of ' sanity ' I am ready to 
fight for rnein liebes Ich, and hold that it will last for 330ns 
of aeons." 

The true poet, if he be also a philosopher, that is, a man 

1 See also In Memoriam, 95. 



Mysticism. 121 

of intense feelings and powerful intellect, must almost of 
necessity be a mystic, for the combined effect of strong emo- 
tions and intellect is very apt to be philosophical mysticism. 
The heights which the man of pure intellect, the philosopher 
or scientist is unable to attain, the philosophical mystic 
reaches with the aid of his sublimated feelings. 

" I found Him not in world or sun, 
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye ; 
Nor through the questions men may try, 
The petty cobwebs we have spun : 

11 If e'er, when faith had fall'n asleep, 
I heard a voice, ' Believe no more,' 
And heard an ever breaking shore, 
That tumbled in the Godless deep : 

" A warmth within the breast would melt 
The freezing reason's colder part, 
And, like a man in wrath, the heart 
Stood up. and answered, ' I have felV " * 

Wordsworth, too, the supreme poet of divine Nature, en- 
joyed many a delightful hour in which his soul took flight 
and bathed itself in the infinite Soul of Nature. We can 
give only one quotation taken from his poem composed on 
revisiting the Wye. 

" These beauteous forms, 
Through a long absence, have not been to me 
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye; 
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din 
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, 
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, 
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart ; 
And passing even into my purer mind, 
With tranquil restoration : — feelings, too, 
Of unremembered pleasure : such, perhaps, 
As have no slight or trivial influence 
On that best portion of a good man's life, 
His little, nameless, unremembered acts 
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, 
To them I may have owed another gift 
Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood, 
In which the burthen of the mystery, 
In which the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world, 
Is lightened :— that serene and blessed mood, 
In which the affections gently lead us on, — 
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame, 
And even the motion of our human blood 
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
In body, and become a living soul : 
While with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
We see into the life of things." 

i Tennyson : In Memoriam, 124. The italics are mine. 



122 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

Our own America can boast of at least one genuine mys- 
tic. This is EMERSON, the incarnated soul of Faizi, the 
Persian Sufi, as he has been called. Like his forerunner, 
Emerson knew no creed or church. In religious matters he 
was a cosmopolitan, owing allegiance to no sect but loving 
the good in all. There is, however, a difference between 
Emerson and his Sufi brother. The latter assigned reality 
only to God, the former only to the mind of man ; the latter 
strove to lose humanity in Deity, the former dissolved 
Deity in humanity ; * ' the Persian aspired to reach a divinity 
above him by self-conquest ; the American seeks to realize 
a divinity within him by self will. Self-annihilation is the 
watchword of the one, self assertion that of the other." 1 

" There is one mind common to all individual men," says 
Emerson. "Who hath access to their universal mind is a 
party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only sov- 
ereign agent." That he believed himself to have such access 
is clear from the lines already quoted : 

"I am the owner of the sphere. 
Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, 
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain." 

Like the Persian mystics, he brushes aside everything which 
would come between him and God. "The relations of the 
soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is profane to 
seek to interpose helps. . . . Whenever a mind is sim- 
ple, and receives a divine wisdom, the old things pass away, 
— means, teachers, texts, temples, fall ; it lives now and 
absorbs past and future into the present hour." 2 

Speaking of Intuition and the height to which it raises 
men, he says: "Fear and hope are alike beneath it. It 
asks nothing. There is something low even in hope. We 
are then in vision. There is nothing that can be called 
gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul is raised over pas- 
sion," etc. So, again: "Prayer as a means to effect a 
private end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism in 
nature and consciousness. As soon as man is at one with 
God he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all ac- 
tion." 8 His belief in complete identity with the oversoul 

1 Vaughan : 2, p. 9. 

2 Emerson's Essays (1848), p. 35. Quoted by Vaughan. 
8 Emerson's Essays, p. 37, 42. Quoted by Vaughan. 



Mysticism. 123 

and transcendence of time and space is brought out in the 
following sentence. "We live in succession, in division, 
in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of 
the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which 
every part and particle is equally related, — the external 
ONE. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose 
beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and 
perfect every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, 
the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are 
one." And again : " Time and space are but inverse meas- 
ures of the force of the soul. A man is capable of abolish- 
ing them both. The spirit sports with time : 

u Can crowd eternity into an hour, 
Or stretch an hour into eternity." 1 

Man, by apprehending God, grows into an organ of the 
Universal Soul. "The simplest person, who in his integ- 
rity worships God, becomes God ; yet forever and ever the 
influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearch- 
able." Again: "I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. 
I am somehow respective of the great soul, and thereby I 
do overlook the sun and the stars, and feel them to be but 
the fair accidents and effects which change and pass." So, 
speaking of the contemplation of Nature : "I become a 
transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all. The cur- 
rents of the Universal Being circulate through me ; I am 
part or particle of God," 2 etc. 

With Plotinus and the other mystics, he teaches the doc- 
trine of passive reception. "I desire, and look up, and 
put myself in the attitude of reception. I am a pensioner, 
not the source of this ethereal water ; from some higher 
energy these visions come." 

Mysticism Among Primitive Peoples. 

The mysticism of primitive peoples is not the product of 
lofty speculation and over-refined emotions ; it is the result 
of vivid dreams, trances, hallucinations, trancoidal states, 
and the like. Prospero's pessimistic remark, 

" We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep" 

1 Emerson : loc. cit., pp. 141-143. 2 Vaughan: 2, p. 22. 



124 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

is literally true of primitive man. ' * To primitive man," 
writes Dr. Brinton, "they (dreams) are real; he sees and 
hears in them as he does in his waking hours ; he does not 
distinguish between the subjective creation of his brain cells 
and objective existence. In what they differ from daily life 
they are divine. They reveal the future and summon the 
absent." 1 

The assertion of Lucretius that ' ' the dreams of men peo- 
pled the heaven with gods," and of Tertullian that " the ma- 
jority of men learn God from visions " may be untrue, but 
it is certain that they play a most important role in the reli- 
gious lives of primitive and ancient peoples. A native Aus- 
tralian, for example, when asked if he has ever seen the great 
Creator, Baiame, replied: "No, not seen him, but I have 
felt (or inwardly perceived) him." Likewise, a Basuto 
chief, when asked whether his people knew of God before 
the missionaries came replied : " We did not know Him, but 
we dreamed of Him." 2 The Kamschatkans, we are told, 
gather together every morning to relate their dreams and to 
guess at their interpretation, and theEsquimos regulate their 
lives to a large extent in accordance with their dreams. The 
Bororos, of Brazil, take a dream so literally that a whole vil- 
lage will decamp and seek a distant site if one dreams of the 
approach of an enemy." 3 

So great is the belief among primitive peoples that dreams 
and hallucinations are divine revelations that many artificial 
devices such as solitude, fasting, self-hypnotization, the use 
of various drugs, herbs, and plants are employed to induce 
them during the day. " Thus it came that the whole of life, 
waking and sleeping, assumed a dreamy, unreal character. 
The traveller Spix says of the forest tribes of Brazil that 
they never seem fully awake ; and a Pawnee war song begins 
by an appeal to the gods to decide if this life is aught but a 
dream." 4 

The ancient Mexicans and the more backward of the East 
Indians were certain it was. This life they taught was a 
dream from which death is the awakening. And the awaken- 
ing which they pictured to themselves was a happy one in- 
deed. The spirit world of the American Indians was a real 
Utopia. There old age, wars, hunger, disease, and other 

1 Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 65. 3 Ibid., p. 65. 

2 Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 51. 4 Ibid., p. 67. 



Mysticism. 125 

evils are unknown. " Every one is happy in the simple 
happiness which he knew on earth, hunting, feasting, and 
playing the old games with former friends." 

Mr. James Mooney traces in a very interesting manner 
the parallel between the religion of the American Indians 
and the mystical elements in the religions of civilized peo- 
ples. "The Indian messiah religion" he tells us, "is the 
inspiration of a dream. Its ritual is the dance, the ecstasy, 
and the trance. Its priests are hypnotics and cataleptics." 1 
He then shows that this is largely true of the religion of the 
ancient Hebrews, the Mohammedans, and to some extent of 
Christianity. We have but to recall the numerous dreams 
and trances of the patriarchs, the priests and prophets, of 
the cataleptic Mohammed, the visions of Jesus and especially 
of Paul, the second founder of Christianity, to appreciate 
the force of this analogy. Eussia fairly teems with mystics 
and mystical sects of this primitive sort. The tyrannical 
government which exposes its subjects to the arbitrary will 
of the officials and nobles ; the poverty, misery, fear, and 
uncertainty in which they live have so shattered the nervous 
systems of the illiterate peasants that epidemics of hysteria 
are of frequent occurrence, new prophets and leaders arise 
every day, and countless sects are born and grow with 
mushroom-like rapidity. 2 

It should now be clear that mysticism is an experience of 
which, on account of its many varieties, different degrees of 
intensity, length of duration, and resulting effects, it is 
difficult, if not impossible, to give a satisfactory definition. 
As in the case of religion we should speak of mysticisms 
rather than of mysticism. We shall not, however, be far 
wrong when we say that in all its varieties it is a kind of 
psychical rapture or intoxication, a theistic or pantheistic 
narcosis in which the subject's self-consciousness loses itself 
in its object or absorbs the object in itself (be that object 
God, flower, landscape, music, or what not), and finds the 
greatest enjojment and satisfaction in its enlargement and 
diffusion. Consciousness overflows its banks, so to speak, 
and spreads infinitely becoming more and more attenuated 
until it finally melts, according to their testimony, into the 
cosmic consciousness or sentiency, the primordial psychic 

1 Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. 

2 See N. Tsakni: La Russie Sectaire, passim. 



126 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

protoplasm, from which all life has evolved. These are 
crude figures to be sure, but in our earthly experiences 
matter and mind are so inseparably connected that we are 
constrained to explain the one in terms of the other. Our 
conception of it is better and more beauifully expressed by 
the mystic poet, Mr. Kingsley. 

" And yet what bliss, 
When dying in the darkness of God's light 
The soul can pierce these blinding webs of nature, 
And float up to the nothing, which is all things — 
The ground of being, where self-forgetful silence 
Is emptiness— emptiness fullness, — fullness God,— 
Till we touch Him, and, like a snowflake, melt 
Upon His light sphere's keen circumference." 

When consciousness reaches this state the mystic is no 
longer able to distinguish between himself and God or the 
Universal Soul ; all distinctions vanish. The mystic then 
even dares to call himself God. His condition is analogous 
to that of the hypnotic subject who either feels that he is 
being controlled by a will stronger and other than his own, 
that his individuality has merged into another's, or believes 
that another's individuality is expressed through him. 

It is only when we understand this peculiar psychical state 
of the mystics that their many pantheistic, and from the 
theist's point of view, sacrilegious boasts become explicable. 

Thus, for example, Angelus Silesius declares : 

" God in my nature is involved, 
As I in the divine ; 
I help to make His being up, 
As much as He does mine. 

" As much as I to God, owes God to me 
His blissfulness and self-sufficiency. 

" I am as rich as God, no grain of dust 
That is not mine too,— share with me he must. 

"More than His love unto Himself, 
God's love to me hath been ; 
If more than self I too love Him, 
We twain are quits, I ween." 1 

Or again, 

" I am as great as God, and He as small as I ; 
He cannot me surpass, or I beneath Him lie. 

"God cannot, without me, endure a moment's space, 
Were I to be destroyed, he must give up the ghost. 

1 R. A. Vaughan: Hours with the Mystics, Vol. 2, p. 7. 



Mysticism. 127 

" Nought seemeth high to me, I am the highest thing ; 
Because e'en God Himself is poor deprived of me." x 

This sounds like mere bombast and arrogant self-deifica- 
tion, but it was not intended as such. Silesius sang of his 
blissful union and identity with God, whom he literally loved 
to distraction, and in whom his whole being lived, and 
moved, and had its existence. 

A few more general statements and our already too long 
chapter is ended. 

There is a difference between mysticism and the philos- 
ophy of mysticism. The former is an experience which is 
felt, the latter is a system of thought or beliefs based on 
these experiences. Philosophical mystics, or those who have 
written philosophically concerning mysticism are not, there- 
fore, necessarily real mystics. Mysticism is a psychic con- 
dition and not a creed. 

Natural mysticism, such as obtains among primitive and 
ancient peoples, may be described as psychical confusion 
due either to ignorance, as when they fail to discriminate 
between dreaming and waking states, or to some nervous 
disturbance like hyperesthesia, as when they have visions, 
trances, hallucinations, etc. 

Religious mysticism is essentially an emotion akin to fer- 
vent love, so fervent, indeed, that it expels all the other 
contents of consciousness and alone rules supreme. Like 
the ardent youthful lover, the mystic feels that every fibre 
and atom of his being is steeped in love, and yet he is not 
rationally conscious of the fact or the reason why he loves so 
madly. 2 He is all emotion, the intellect when not kept in 
abeyance or entirely silenced is employed to analyze and 
describe his mystical experiences. And, just as in the 
world of sensations an excessive amount of light blinds, 
and of sound deafens, so in the emotional world an excess- 
ive amount of it volatilizes consciousness, so to speak, 
and throws the subject into a trance. Moreover, the 
mystic's love is not all of the Platonic type ; most frequently 
it is of the sensuous sort, born of the sexual impulse and 
bearing every mark of it, even jealousy. Ant. Bourignon 
could not endure the thought that others were able to share 
with her " the sweet communication " of her celestial spouse, 

1 R. A. Vaughan: Hours with the Mystics, Vol. 2, p. 22. 

2 See Shakespeares' Sonnets, 147-162. 



128 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

and other similar cases, it will be remembered, were cited 
earlier in the book when we treated of the pathological 
relation between love and religion. We see here that "if " 
as Prof. Leuba says, " sex does not make religion it often 
gives it its particular form. ' ' l His suggestion that mysti- 
cism is i ' an experiment tried by human nature to bring the 
sexual life more completely under the control of the higher 
nervous centres and thus to make it serve for the fur- 
therance of that to which the individual ascribes greatest 
worth ' ' is interesting. Certainly it is a more aesthetic, if 
unnatural way of satisfying an animal impulse. The mys- 
tic yearns to live a dematerialized, supernormal life ; to 
dwell always in the supra-liminal regions of the emotions 
and the intellect, and in order to do this he must, so far 
as he is able, die to his material self and to all material 
objects about him. 

" While aught thou art or know'st or lov'st or hast, 
Not yet, believe me, is thy burden gone. 

11 Who is as though he were not — ne'er had been — 
That man, oh joy! is made God absolute. 

tl Self is surpassed by self-annihilation : 
•The nearer nothing, so much more divine." 

This necessitates that the mystic be ego-centric, 'inward- 
minded, ' as Leuba terms it, and anti-social. His only care 
is his own soul and happiness, his only desire is to revel 
in feeling-intoxication. For the world, his family, friends, 
and fellow-beings he has little or no concern. Nothing is 
permitted to come between him and his God. The mystic 
is never a reformer or missionary ; he is too busy with him- 
self to make converts. He is the very antipode of the active 
fanatic. 

The efforts to dematerialize himself, to reduce the con- 
tents of his consciousness to one idea, — God ; and his will to 
one desire, — union with Him, are extremely laborious and 
painful, and frequently bring on physical and psychical dis- 
turbances of the gravest sort. In these long drawn out 
struggles between the mind and body the mystic is a very 
Jekyll and Hyde ; when the former conquers he is a saint, 
when the latter conquers he is a sensuous madman. 

From this point of view mysticism may be described as 

1 Mind, Vol. 14, N. S., No. 53. 



Mysticism. 129 

an attempt to put asunder what God hath joined together, 
namely, body and soul, in order that the latter might be able 
to communicate directly with God. With normal people, 
God is a lux et vis a tergo which brightens the path of life 
for them and makes their daily labor sweet. With the 
mystics, however, in whom the work-instinct is either un- 
developed or atrophied, He is a light which forever shines 
in their eyes and dazzles and fatally attracts them somewhat 
as the flame does the moth. In spite of their strenuous 
ascetic exercises mystics, as a rule, belong to the passive 
type of men. It is stillness, solitude, death, annihilation, 
absorption that they yearn and strive for. Or, psycho- 
logically speaking, it is mental harmony and unity that they 
feel the need of, but cannot, like normal people, find them in 
many-sided interests, but only in one, all-absorbing occupa- 
tion. They lack the will and energy to live and develop to 
their fullest the lives which Nature or God has given them. 
Finally, mysticism generally accompanies a lowered vital- 
ity. We might almost say the two vary in inverse ratio. 
In this respect it is akin to sleep, trance, and the hypnotic 
state in which an idea, innate or suggested, is most easily 
realized. It thrives best in hypersensitive and neurotic 
soil. Many of their claims and boasts remind us forcibly 
of the grandiose delusions of general paretics and paranoiacs. 1 

1 For excellent psychological analyses of mysticism see Murisier : Les 
Maladies du Sentiment Religieux, Paris, 1901, and Leuba : Tendences 
Fondamentales des Mystiques Chretiens, Rev. Phil., July and Nov., 
1902. Also, on the Psych, of a Group of Christian Mystics, Mind, Vol. 
14, N. S., No. 53. A good English digest of Prof. Leuba's articles are 
to be found in the Am. Jour, of Beligious Psy. and Ed., Vol. 1, pp. 
87-89. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 
SYMBOLISM, 

Closely akin to mysticism is symbolism, which may be 
defined as the attempt to give to spirituality a sensuous and 
perceptible body ; or, to express mind in terms of matter, 
infinity in terms of finity, the abstract in terms of the con- 
crete, the general in terms of the particular. " In the sym- 
bol proper," writes Carlyle, " what we call a symbol there is 
ever more or less distinctly and directly some embodiment 
and revelation of the Infinite ; the Infinite is made to blend 
itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and, as it were, at- 
tainable there. 1 

Symbolism is a natural, and, therefore, a necessary and 
useful psychical activity ; without it religion could not, per- 
haps, have been born ; certainly it could not have thrived ; 
and art, language, literature, philosophy, and even science 
could not have developed, for all these are built up more or 
less of symbols. The naive and animistic mind of primitive 
man found it difficult to think in general terms, and abstrac- 
tion was completely beyond its power. Attributes and qual- 
ities, such as color, taste, odor, cold, warmth, hardness, 
goodness, etc., were never separated from their objects. 
Thought was always of concrete things. And even now, 
Infinity, Eternity, Immortality, God, the Absolute, and 
other such abstract conceptions are, as purely such, mean- 
ingless for most of us. They are the unknown xs and ys, 
whose values we determine, as far as possible, by means of 
other xs and ys whose values we already know. We meas- 
ure Infinity by yards, Eternity by years, and God by man. 
That is to say, our thoughts, imaginations, memories, ideas, 
and the like are all derived and developed from our multifa- 
rious sensations and perceptions, — our life experiences ; and 

1 Sartor Resartus. 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 131 

therefore, in a sense, more true than poetic, we create or re- 
create God and the Universe in our own images. In the 
whole hierarchy of divine attributes there is not a single one 
which is not human or an exaggeration of a human one. To 
quote the famous line of Locke, " Nihil est in intellectu 
quod non antea fuerit in sensu." The "Nisi intellectus 
ipse " of Leibnitz is here impertinent. This truth is nowhere 
more strikingly manifest than in the evolution of language 
and its influeuce on the evolution of thought. Words among 
primitive peoples express action ; they are endowed with life 
like living beings, and transmit their vitality to the objects to 
which they become attached. Everything has sex, for exam- 
ple, because their words have gender. M. Andre Lefevre, in 
his scholarly work La Religion, maintains the thesis that all 
the supernatural agents and metaphysical beings of all peo- 
ples owe their life, their activity, and their sway over the 
thought and conduct of individuals and groups ' ' to the met- 
aphoric power inherent in the most rudimentary language." 
He tells us that the same god in different groups or even in 
the same region will, " according to the times or the caprices 
of language behold himself a male under one name and a 
female under another ; and, invested with beauty or ugli- 
ness, benevolence or malignity, in the flower of youth or 
decline of age he must act conformably to the habits and 
proprieties of his sex." 1 

Whether or not this statement be true, whether words 
precede thoughts or thoughts words, it is certainly true that 
the carriers of our thoughts, in the act of transmission, leave 
indelible impressions of their symbolic nature on their bur- 
dens. Spirit takes on form and body, and mind becomes 
matter through language, just as matter mysteriously be- 
comes mind through the senses. 

Even philosophy, the clearing-house of all intellectual 
commerce, deals only in appearances or symbols, drawing 
now and then in its mystical hours upon the transcendent 
treasury for reality. Our thoughts, our lives, our universes 
are founded upon symbols. This is the burden of all phi- 
losophies worthy of the name. 

Now, just as bits of paper bearing the government stamp 
are regarded by the masses as money, so are symbols bear- 
ing the divine stamp regarded by them as divine, and not 

1 P. 20. 



132 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

infrequently as divinities themselves. Witness the idols, 
fetiches, amulets, and charms of primitive peoples, the cross, 
crescent, pillar, wheel, and innumerable other symbols of 
more civilized peoples the world over. 

But man must be sure that he is not deceived, that some- 
where in the realm of space the reality actually exists. The 
Jews in the Wilderness insisted on seeing God or some un- 
mistakable manifestation of his power, and centuries later 
the same God had to incarnate Himself and live and move 
among his human creatures as one of them. The time is 
perhaps ripe for a second incarnation, at any rate, millions 
are living in the hope that it will soon take place. 

In religious symbolism as such, there is nothing abnormal 
any more than there is in secular symbolism ; in treasuring 
bits of paper, for example, tattered flags, heirlooms, auto- 
graphs, pieces of apparel of famous men and women, etc. 
These are the things which bring us as near as possible to 
reality ; to the persons to whom they once belonged, they are 
the links which bind us to them and make us in so far, at 
least, related. " To possess a glove once worn by Shake- 
speare," writes d'Alviella, " a bit of his manuscript, his au- 
tograph, is to possess a treasure which not even the greatest 
among us would not prize." 1 

Symbols are powerful aids to faith because by means of 
the many sensations they give rise to they keep the object 
or being symbolized, constantly in the foreground of con- 
sciousness. But just so soon as the being or idea, which 
was once represented in the symbol is forgotten, as soon as 
the soul within the body is neglected, there is spiritual de- 
generation and death. The symbol which was at first used 
merely to assist the mind to conceive of the Deity then be- 
comes a fetich as important as the Deity itself and soon dis- 
places it altogether. Bits of the cross on which Jesus was 
believed to have died were, during the Middle Ages and 
even later, considered sacred, and regarded as the best rem- 
edy for all diseases. Next in favor came the tears of the 
Saviour, then of the Virgin Mary and St. Peter, then the 
drops of blood of Jesus and the Martyrs. Hair and toe 
nails also had great remedial qualities and were sold at ex- 
travagant prices. A lucrative trade was carried on in iron 
filings from the chains with which it was claimed that Peter 

1 See Goblet D'Alviella : l The Migration of Symbols.' p. 3. 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 133 

and Paul had been bound. These filings were regarded by 
Pope Gregory I as efficacious in healing as were the bones 
of the martyrs. 

How and by whom these relics were collected and pre- 
served no one thought, no one dared, perhaps, to ask. To 
doubt was already heresy. Mr. Mackay, in his Popular 
Delusions half humorously remarks, " There were toe nails 
enough in Europe at the time of the Council of Cleremont 
to have filled a sack, all of which were devoutly believed to 
have grown on the sacred foot of St. Peter." Concerning 
the fragments of the true cross he says, " they would, if 
collected together in one place, have been almost sufficient 
to have built a Cathedral." 1 Poor indeed was the church in 
those days which did not possess some of these relics. 

Touching the hangings about the tomb of St. Martin was 
sufficient to cure Bishop Gregory of Tours of a pain in the 
temples. He repeated the experiment three times with 
equal success. Once he was cured of an attack of mortal 
dysentery by drinking a glass of water in which he had dis- 
solved a pinch of dust scraped up on the tomb of the Saint. 
At another time when his tongue had become swollen and 
tumefied, he licked the railing of the tomb of St. Martin and 
his tongue returned to its natural size. Even a toothache 
was cured by St. Martin's relics. In the following apostro- 
phe of Bishop Gregory to the relics of St. Martin we have a 
very good example of symbolism degenerated into fetich 
worship. " Oh ineffable theriac ! ineffable pigment ! admir- 
able antidote ! celestial purge ! superior to all drugs of the 
faculty ! sweeter than aromatics ! stronger than unguents 
together ! thou cleanest the stomach like scammony, the 
lungs like hyssop, thou purges t the head like pyre-thrig ! " 

Very important among these relics was the Agnus Dei, or 
piece of wax from the Paschal candles, stamped with the 
figures of a lamb and consecrated by the Pope. In 1471 
Pope Paul II expatiated to the Church on the efficacy of this 
fetich in preserving men from fire, shipwreck, tempest, 
lightning, and hail, as well as assisting women in childbirth ; 
and he reserved to himself and his successors the manufac- 
ture of it. Even as late as 1517 Pope Leo X issued, for a 
consideration, tickets bearing a cross and the following in- 
scription : "This cross measured forty times makes the 

1 Vol. l, p. 157. 



134 Pathological Aspects of Religions, 

height of Christ in his humanity. He who kisses it is pre- 
served for seven days from falling sickness, apoplexy, and 
sudden death." 

* ' Water in which a single hair of a Saint had been dipped 
was used as a purgative ; water in which St. Remy's hair had 
been dipped cured fevers ; wine in which the bones of a 
Saint had been dipped cured lunacy ; oil from a lamp burn- 
ing before the tomb of St. Gall cured tumors ; St. Valentine 
cured epilepsy : St. Christopher, throat diseases ; St. Utro- 
pius, dropsy ; St. Ovid, deafness ; St. Vitus, St. Anthony, 
and a multitude of other saints, the maladies which bear 
their names. Even as late as 1784 we find certain authori- 
ties in Bavaria ordering that any one bitten by a mad dog 
shall at once put up prayers at the shrine of St. Hubert, and 
not waste his time in any attempts at medical or surgical 
cure. In the twelfth century we find a noted cure attempted 
by causing the invalid to drink water in which St. Bernard 
had washed his hands. Flowers which rested on the tomb 
of a saint, when steeped in water, were supposed to be es- 
pecially efficacious in various diseases," etc., etc. 1 Similar 
beliefs and practices obtain to-day among the lower class 
French who visit the shrine at Lourdes, the Canadians who 
journey to the shrine of St. Anne d'Aupres, and among 
millions of Russian peasants. 

In all these cases we have symbolism degenerated into 
fetichism and idolatry of the crassest sort. It is a distinct 
backsliding from a height already attained, and is patho- 
logical in that it has proven injurious to the health of the 
believers and detrimental to the natural development of 
science. ''Naturally, the belief thus sanctioned by the suc- 
cessive heads of the Church, infallible in all teachings re- 
garding faith and morals," writes Mr. A. D. White, "cre- 
ated a demand for amulets and charms of all kinds ; and 
under this influence we find a reversion to old pagan fetiches. 
Nothing on the whole stood more constantly in the way of 
any proper development of medical science than these fetich 
cures whose efficacy was based on theological reasoning and 
sanctioned by ecclesiastical policy." 2 

Fetichism, like symbolism, is normal in its proper time 

1 See A. D. White : Hist, of the Warfare of Science with Theology, 
Vol. 2, pp. 28 ff. 

fl A. D. White : Hist, of the Warfare of Science with Theol., Vol. 2, 
p. 30. 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 135 

and place. There is not a plant, animal, or object on our 
earth ; not a star or planet in the heavens ; not a fish, per- 
haps, in the sea, that has not at some time been the object 
of religious worship, and believed to possess talismanic 
powers. And all this was and is natural and necessary to 
primitive peoples as it is to our own children ; it harmonizes 
with their stage of development. But not so with the 
Christians of the Middle Ages and later, not so with modern 
Buddhism and Brahmanism, not so with the Russian army 
from the commander-in-chief down to the ordinary, who 
have taken with them icons of their favorite saints to pro- 
tect them in their battles against the heathen Japanese, 1 not 
so with the French and Canadians of to-day. In the one 
case fetichism is a natural religion, the only one possible to 
that stage of development ; in the other it is superstition 
and inexcusable ignorance, a degeneration and disgrace to 
the religion to which it parasitically adheres. 

The Christianity of the Middle Ages, for example, seems 
to have entirely forgotten John's definition of religion and 
even the Sermon on the Mount in which the Master laid 
bare the living heart of religion. And indeed this is true 
of the Christianity of a comparatively late period, in which 
ceremony played the leading, and morality only a minor 
r61e. Mr. R. P. Knight, speaking of the early part of the 
17th century, says, "In religious matters, while open im- 
purity of life incurred little disapproval, there existed an 
extraordinary sensitiveness in regard to every possible en- 
croachment upon the domain fenced off and consecrated to 
technical orthodoxy. There was a taboo as strict if not as 
mysterious as was ever imposed and enforced by the Sacer- 
dotal caste of the Kanaka Islands." 2 To disregard the 
smallest religious ordinance was considered a criminal act 
and punished as such. The rule of St. Columbanus, for in- 
stance, required, among other things, " a year's penance for 
him who loses a consecrated wafer ; six months for him who 
suffers it to be eaten by mice ; twenty days for him who 
lets it turn red ; forty days for him who contemptuously 
flings it into the water ; twenty days for him who brings it 
up through weakness of stomach, but if through illness, 
ten days. He who neglects his Amen to the Benedicite, 

1 See Open Court, Sept., 1904. 

2 Symbolical Lang, of Ancient Art and Mythology, Preface, p. iv. 



136 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

who speaks when eating, who forgets to make the sign of 
the Cross on his spoon, or on a lantern lighted by a younger 
brother is to receive six or twelve stripes." 1 

Similarly, among the Hindus, any mistake made in the 
food that might be eaten, in the dress that might be worn, 
in the sacrifice that might be paid ; any error in pronuncia- 
tion, a mistake about clarified butter, an unauthorized ar- 
rangement of raiment or hair might involve the worshipper 
in pains and penalties of the most awful character. 

' * The seventeenth Fargard or chapter of the Yendidad — 
a portion of the Zendavesta, is tediously liturgical and dis- 
cusses such minutise as the arrangement of the hair of the 
head, the extraction of bad or gray hairs, and the cutting of 
nails. If these operations are performed without certain 
prescribed ceremonies, the devs or demons come upon earth, 
and parasitical organisms are produced to the great discom- 
fort and injury of man. Little wonder, then, that the com- 
mon people employed the priests at the price practically of 
their freedom, to assist them in their worship." 2 

The religion of the Buddhists of Thibet requires that the 
believer should be all his time immersed in holy contempla- 
tion of the perfections of Buddha, and the believer is taught 
that it is a meritorious act and a patent cure for sin to be 
continually reading or reciting portions of the sacred books 
of Buddha. But, as many of the people could not read, 
and still more had not the time to carry out these injunc- 
tions, a contrivance had to be invented whereby they could 
serve their God and attend to their work at the same time. 
The priests declared that it would be sufficient for those who 
could not read, if they merely turned over the rolled manu- 
scripts which embodied the invaluable precepts. But this, 
too, required a vast amount of time and trouble, and there- 
fore a further simplification had to be made. Praising 
wheels or cylinders, varying in size from a few inches to 
many feet in height and diameter were constructed so that 
they could be easily rotated by hand or by water. These 
cylinders are filled with paper or cloth, on which is repeated 
as many times as can be written a Mantra, i, e., a word or 
combination of words which may be used by way of invoca- 
tion during an act of worship. Each time the cylinder re- 

1 Quoted by Herbert Spencer : Ecclesiastical Institutions. 

2 W. H. D. Adams : Curiosities of Superstition. 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 137 

volves on its axis the devotee is accredited with having ut- 
tered the pious invocation written on the strips of paper or 
cloth, and receives so much Kharma or merit. Since, 
therefore, the more the wheel is turned, the more Kharma 
is acquired by the person who caused it to turn, the easiest 
and best thing to do is to construct cylinders which can be 
turned by hand or better still by water. 

"On the outside of many a temple" (in Thibet), writes 
Mr. Wm. Simpson, 1 " there was a long row of small cylin- 
ders, each about the size of an oyster barrel, placed in the 
wall at such a height that any one in passing could turn 
them with the hand." He also describes several wheels 
turned by water power. A cheaper variation of the same 
machine was a small cylinder which could be tied around 
the wrist, and would continue to grind out acts of worship 
while the owner carried on his daily work. Mr. Adams 
compares these turnings to the telling of beads done so fre- 
quently in European lands, not only by nuns and monks, 
but even by the workmen ' as homeward along the road they 
plod their weary way,' and says: "Prayer, even among 
Christians, is apt to degenerate into a dull, mechanical uni- 
formity, and to become scarcely less perfunctory than that 
which the Thibetans grind out of their prayer-machine." 2 

Note, for example, the repetitions in the following : 

Heart of Mary, full of grace, pray for us ! 

" " " , sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, pray for us ! 
" " " , tabernacle of the Incarnate Word, " " " ! 
" " " , illustrious throne of glory, " " " ! etc. 

Also the oft-recurring " Good Lord deliver us !" and " We 
beseech Thee to hear us, Good Lord." 

The orthodox Jews repeat on the Day of Atonement and 
New Year the following phrase, with slight additions and 
variations, 168 times : " For the sin that we have committed 
in thy presence," etc. And on week days they repeat the 
following 44 and 26 times respectively : 

"Our Father, our King, 11 etc. 

" For His mercy endure th forever, 11 etc. 

Besides these there are numerous other prayers which 
consist of long and tedious repetitions of the same phrase. 
' ' There is a coarse superstition embodied in the praying 

1 The Buddhist Praying Wheel. 

2 W. H. D. Adams: Curiosities of Superstition, p. 2. 



138 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

machine," writes Dr. Conway, " which all sects share alike : 
one which is inherent in the very nature of prayer. It is 
the belief implied that the benefits of this universe are to be 
secured by the perfunctory lip-service or barrel-service of 
human beings." 1 

Whatever the origin of this invocation by hand and water 
power may have been (there are several different theories) 
it is certainly the most curious and grotesque rite in the 
whole history of religion and superstition, and shows us to 
what extent degeneration, if unchecked, will proceed. 

Another group of symbolic rites which seems to have been 
well-nigh universal, and to have not infrequently degener- 
ated into mere fetiches are the various water and fire bap- 
tismal rites. In the Protestant church, baptism has been the 
cause of a wide schism and of interminable discussions as to 
whether it should be administered to infants or only adults, 
and whether it should be performed by dipping, sprinkling, 
or immersion of the whole body, according to the different 
interpretations of the Greek verb ' bapto.' A perfectly nor- 
mal rite so long as its symbolic meaning is not forgotten, it 
becomes a pathological fetich when the subjects are taken 
out in midwinter and immersed in ice-cold water, as is so 
frequently done in Russia, and even in some parts of our 
own country. 

Purification by jumping through the flame of a sacred fire 
is still in vogue among the Hindus, as it was among the 
earliest Romans and also among the native Irish. Men, 
women, children, and even cattle in Ireland leap over or 
pass through sacred bonfires annually kindled in honor of 
Baal (an ancient title of the sun). Interesting in this con- 
nection are the numerous obscene phallic rites and symbols, 2 
and the still more foul and revolting scatological rites of 
primitive peoples. 3 But we need not enter into the disgust- 
ing details. 

" Ritual worship in general," says Prof. James, " appears 
to the modern transcendentalist, as well as to the ultra-puri- 
tanic type of mind, as if addressed to a deity of an almost 
absurdly childish character, taking delight in toy-shop fur- 
niture, tapers and tinsel, costume and mumbling and mum- 
mering, and finding his ' glory ' incomprehensibly enhanced 

1 M. D. Conway: Idols and Ideals, p. 68. 

2 R. P. Knight: The Worship of Priapus. 

8 J. G. Bourke: Scatological Rites of All Nations. 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation, 139 

thereby ; — just as on the other hand the formless spacious- 
ness of pantheism appears quite empty to ritualistic natures, 
and the gaunt theism of evangelical sects seems intolerably 
bald and chalky and bleak." 1 

It is pathological symbolism that Carlyle alludes to when 
he says : "Meanwhile in our era of the world, these same 
Church-Clothes have gone sorrowfully out-at-elbows ; nay, 
far worse, many of them have become mere hollow Shapes, 
or Masks, under which no living Figure or Spirit any longer 
dwells ; but only spiders and unclean beetles in horrid accu- 
mulation drive their trade, and the mask still glares on you 
with its glass eyes, in ghastly affectation of Life — some gen- 
eration-and-half after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, 
and in unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures 
wherewith to reappear and bless us, or our sons or grand- 
sons." 2 

Religion to be normal must, as has so often been said be- 
fore, be alive and keep abreast of the developments in other 
fields. If the sheath which covers and protects religion in 
its infancy is allowed to harden, then either the life is slowly 
crushed out, or, if internal growth continues, the outer shell 
is broken and cast off, causing much unnecessary pain to the 
religious organism. The figure which Prof. LeConte uses 
in speaking of the social organism applies with equal force 
to the religious organism . The religious organism should 
be ' * constructed on the vertebrate instead of the crustacean 
plan ; with the skeleton within in eternal ethical principles, 
instead of without, in dogmas and formulas ; and the exte- 
rior with its customs, habits, forms of belief, etc., should be 
left plastic and yielding to interior growth, sensitive to all 
external influences, and receptive of all new knowledge." 3 

That the religious organism is still in many places con- 
structed on the crustacean plan is evident from the fact that 
one may lead a most Christ-like life and not be considered a 
Christian by the various denominations because he has not 
been baptized, or has not received the Sacrament, or per- 
formed some other religious ceremony. The venerable Tol- 
stoi has recently been excommunicated and anathematized 
by the Russian Orthodox Church, his greatest sin being, 
according to the Synod, " reviling the most sacred objects 

1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 330. 

2 Sartor Resartus: Bk. 3, ch. 2. 

8 Religious Significance of Science, Monist, Jan., 1900. 



140 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

of the faith of the Orthodox people, he has not shrunk from 
subjecting to derision the greatest of Sacraments, the Holy 
Eucharist." l The Russian Church, as is well known, has 
always laid greatest emphasis on the form, the ceremonies 
and rites, and but very little on the spirit. She has never 
striven to awaken the true religious sentiment in her adher- 
ents or to satisfy their moral and aesthetic needs. She has 
always busied herself with forms, demanded ritual punctil- 
iousness, blind worship of the icons or sacred images, mo- 
notonous repetition of certain passages of prayers, frequent 
fastings, genuflexions, etc. To the masses religion means 
the performance of ceremonies and interminable discussions 
of such questions as, How should the fingers be placed in 
making the sign of the Cross ? What is the proper orthog- 
raphy of Jesus, — Issous or Iissous? Should the word halle- 
lujah be repeated three times or twice ? And countless other 
such unimportant and absurd problems. Difference of opin- 
ion with regard to these points has given rise to numerous 
sects and untiring persecution on the part of the mother 
Church. 

Among the orthodox Jews to-day, their reform brothers 
who worship bare-headed and in English or German or 
French rather than Hebrew which they do not understand, 
who have discarded the robe and phylacteries and have dis- 
continued the performance of many useless ceremonies, the 
meaning of which few know, are regarded as churls and 
treated with contempt. For the orthodox Jews the law 
concerning fringes is still considered the most important of 
all the six hundred and thirteen precepts. 

Unfortunately, a large part of the religious world does 
not yet understand the true meaning of religion as did Paul 
when he said: "For he is not a Jew, which is one out- 
wardly ; neither is that circumcision which is outward in the 
flesh: 

' ' But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly ; and circum- 
cision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the 
letter ; whose praise is not of men, but of God." 

At the other extreme to this we have sects like the 
Quakers, the Nemoliaki, or those who do not pray, the 
Chalapouts, and other Russian sects belonging to the Rational 
Current who have renounced all forms and ceremonies. 

1 Tolstoy: Essays and Letters, p. 262. 



Symbolism, Fetiehism, and Interpretation. 141 

Such religions, whatever may be said in their favor, are cer- 
tainly lacking in those elements which the aesthetic nature 
of man needs for its satisfaction. They are cold, barren, 
colorless, and imperfect. The best religion, of course, is 
that which satisfies all sides of a man's nature in such a way 
that a healthy harmony and balance is maintained among 
them. 

Interpretation and Bibliolatry. 

At the time when Paul spoke the above sentences, the 
Jewish religion, — that loftiest product of the ancient mind 
— had already degenerated into legalism, formalism, and 
bibliolatry. Not that it had been neglected and allowed to 
fall into desuetude, but rather because it had been over- 
stimulated. The Jewish consciousness suffered not from 
atrophy of the religious sense, but from hypertrophy. For 
centuries upon centuries the Jewish mind allowed itself but 
one task, the study of the Law. All other subjects were 
considered of little significance and importance when com- 
pared with the subject-matter of the great Book of which 
Jehovah himself was the Author. This was the mental 
pabulum of all the Sophertm (458-320 B. C), Chachamim 
(B. C. 320-A. D. 13) lanaim (13-190 A. D.), Amoraim 
(190-498), Seboraim (498-689), and the Goanim (689-900). 
" The study of the law," the Talmud tells us, "is of even 
greater merit than to rescue one from accidental death, than 
building the Temple, and greater than honoring father or 
mother." Let the reader picture to himself a great people 
concentrating all their intellectual energies upon a single 
book for more than twenty-two centuries and he will be 
able, in a measure, to imagine the mass of subtleties, vaga- 
ries, fancies, and hairsplittings they must have created. 
4 'AH Gentile learning was forbidden; no communion was 
allowed with the human intellect outside the Pharisaic pale," 
and the result was, naturally enough, an inverted pyramid. 
As with the Chinese, classicism, narrow and over-specializa- 
tion, exclusiveness, and crystallization spelt their doom. 

Upon the Bible, which we may consider the foundation 
of the pyramid, were laid first the Mishna, which is a minute 
explanation of and commentary on the Bible, containing 6 
orders (Sedarim), 71 Massictoth, 633 Perakim, and 4187 
Mishnaioth. Then upon the Mishna were laid the two Ge- 
maras, which follow the Mishna word by word, sentence by 



142 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

sentence, commenting upon it and deciding when possible 
debatable questions. Later, Rashi added his voluminous 
commentary on the Bible and the Gemara ; and last of all 
there is the Quabala, which explains symbolically every 
verse, word, letter, the shape of the letters, their position 
in the words, every vowel point and accent of the whole 
Massorah. Reb Aquiba went still farther and maintained 
that there was a mystic meaning in every horn and letter- 
flourish of every letter, w just as in every fibre of an ant's 
foot or a gnat's wing." 1 

A few extracts of these works, which, as already said, 
represent the labors of the Jewish mind for many centuries, 
will give the reader at least a faint idea of their contents 
and character. 2 

The following are the opening and closing paragraphs of 
the Talmud, which is composed of the Mishna and the 
Gemara. 

1 * From what time is the Shemah 3 read in the evening? 
From the time when the priests enter the sanctuary to eat 
of their heave-offerings, until the end of the first night- 
watch. These are the words of Rabbi Eliezar, but the 
sages say until midnight, and Rabdon Gamliel says until the 
dawn of morning. It came to pass that the son of this 
Rabbi once returned from a banqueting-house after mid- 
night, and said unto him, 'We have not yet read the 
Shemah!' He said unto them, *If the morning dawn has 
not yet appeared, ye are bound to read it ; and not in this 
case only, but in every instance where the sages say until 
midnight.' 

Their precept holds good until the morning daybreak. 

The precept with regard to the burning of the fat and the 
joints holds good till the dawn of morning. For all offer- 
ings which must be eaten the same day, the precept holds 
good till the morning dawn rises. If this be the case, why 
do the sages say f until midnight ? ' In order to keep man 
far from transgression. — The Mishna on Blessings. 

"The Tanna (author of the Mishna), it is asked, to what 

1 See Farrar : Hist, of Interpretation, p. 74. 

2 These selections are taken from the following works : Paul L. Her- 
shon : A Talmudic Miscellany ; H. Polano : Selections from the Tal- 
mud ; Jos. Barclay : The Talmud ; Rev. M. C. Peters : Wit and Wisdom 
of the Talmud ; and F. W. Farrar : History of Interpretation. 

8 The prayer beginning "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one 
Lord.' 1 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 143 

does he refer when he teaches ' from what time ? ' And be- 
sides, why does he teach about it in the evening first, in- 
stead of in the morning first ? The Tanna rests upon Scrip- 
ture, where it is written (Deut. 6), 'When thou liest down 
and when thou risest up,' and thus he teaches the time 
of reading the Shemah when thou liest down. When does 
it begin ? It begins from the hour when the priests enter 
to eat their heave-offering. But if thou wishest, I will say 
that he derives it from the account of the creation of the 
world, where it is written (Gen. 1), f And the evening and 
the morning were day one.' If this be so, why does a later 
Mishna (fol. 2, col. 1) teach that at dawn two benedictions 
are to be said before the Shemah, and one after it, and at 
eventide two benedictions are to be repeated before it, and 
two after it? Ought it not to teach concerning the evening 
first? The Tanna commences (in the above Mishna) f in the 
evening,' then (in the later Mishna) he teaches ? at the dawn.' 
When he treats of the dawn he explains the particulars re- 
lating to the dawn, and then explains the particulars relating 
to the evening. 

"Mar (the master, or editor of the Mishna) says, 'from 
the hour when the priests enter to partake of the heave- 
offering.' And from what time do the priests enter to par- 
take of the heave-offering? Reply : From the time that the 
stars appear.' He should have taught them ' from the time 
that the stars appear' (which would have been easier to be 
understood) . This he makes us to apprehend by the way. 
From what point of time do the priests eat the heave-offer- 
ing? From the appearing of the stars. And then he gives 
us to understand that the expiatory sacrifice does not hinder 
(the priests eating of the heave-offering) , according to the 
teaching of tradition (Lev. 22), 'And when the sun goes 
down he shall be clean.' It is the going down of the sun 
which might hinder him eating of the heave-offering, but 
the expiatory sacrifice does not hinder him eating it. But 
whence (do we know) , that this ' when the sun is down ' 
means * when the sun sets,' and « he shall be clean ' is * the 
purity of the day?' Perhaps." 

This is the first page of the Talmud. f Perhaps ' is the 
catchword of the next page. 

' « Tallow or suet of clean cattle ( ? clean ' is the catchword 
which finishes one page and commences the next) does not 
defile like carrion, and requires legal authorization. Tallow 



144 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

or suet of unclean cattle defiles like carrion, and therefore 
needs no legal authorization. Unclean fish and locusts in 
villages require discrimination." 

" A beehive, says Rabbi Eleazar, is like landed property, 
and a title-deed is to be written to give right of possession. 
In its standing place it is not liable to become defiled, and 
he who takes of its honey on the Sabbath is in duty bound 
to bring a sin-offering. But the sages say it is not like 
landed property ; no title-deed is to be drawn up in regard 
to it ; it is liable to defilement (as it stands) in its place, and 
he who takes honey from it is not guilty. From what time 
does honeycomb become liable to ceremonial defilement as 
food? The school of Shammai says from the time the bee- 
hive is fumigated ; the school of Hillel says, from the time 
the beehive is emptied." 

" Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levi says, the Holy one — blessed 
be He ! — will in the future give to every righteous man an 
inheritance of three hundred and ten worlds, for it is said 
(Prov. 8), 'That I may cause those that love me to inherit 
substance, (£^, by gematria ==310) and I will fill their 
treasures.' Rabbi Shimon ben Chalapta says, the Holy One 
— blessed be He ! has found no such vehicle for blessing 
Israel as peace, for it is said (Prov. 29), 'The Lord will 
give strength unto His people. The Lord will bless His 
people with peace.'" 

Thus ends the Talmud, which is so cyclopedic in character 
and so huge in its dimensions that, according to the Rabbis, 
it would require one seven years, studying six hours a day, 
to attain even a moderate acquaintance with its contents. 

Mr. Hershon has grouped about 1,600 quotations from the 
Talmud according "to the prominency in them of particular 
numbers, on which special stress is laid." The following are 
a few of them : 

One. 

* * Where do we learn that the Shechinah rests even upon 
one who studies the law? In Exodus 20: 24, where it is 
written, ' In all places whore I record my name I will come 
unto thee, and I will bless thee /..... One pang of re- 
morse at a man's heart is of more avail than many stripes 
applied to him. (See Prov. 17 : 10.) . . . 

1 Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord ! ' (Deut. 
6 : 4). Whosoever prolongs the utterance of the word 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 145 

On&O one, shall have his days and years prolonged to him. 
(A story is told that Rabbi Akiba, when his flesh was being 
torn with currycombs sounded forth the word (*infcO one "> 
until his soul departed from him. Then came forth a Bath 
Kol, or echo of the voice of God, from heaven which said, 
' Blessed art thou, Rabbi Akiba, for thy soul and the word 
one left thy body together.' . . . Once a Gentile came 
to Shamai and said, r Proselytize me, but on condition that 
thou teach me the whole law, in the whole of it, whilst I 
stand upon one leg.' Shamai drove him off with the build- 
er's rod which he held in his hand. Witen he came to Hillel 
with the same challenge, Hillel converted him by answering 
him on the spot, f That which is hateful to thyself, do not do 
to thy neighbor. This is the whole law, and the rest is its 
commentary.' . 

Not one single thing has God created in vain. He created 
the snail as a remedy for a blister ; the fly for the sting of a 
wasp ; the gnat for the bite of a serpent ; the serpent itself 
for healing the itch or (the scab) ; and the lizard (or the 
spider) for the sting of a scorpion. . . . When a man 
is dangerously ill, the law grants dispensation, for it says, 
' You may break one Sabbath on his behalf, that he may be 
preserved to keep many Sabbaths.' . 

Rabbi Meyer saith, ' Great is repentance, because for the 
sake of one that truly repenteth the whole world is pardoned ; 
as it is written (Hosea 14 : 4), 'I will heal their backsliding, 
I will love them freely, for mine anger is turned away from 
him.' It is not said 'from them,' but 'from Am.' . . 

He who observes one precept, in addition to those which, 
as originally laid upon him, he has discharged, shall receive 
favor from above, and is equal to him who has fulfilled the 
whole law. ... 

One wins eternal life after a struggle of years another 
finds it in one hour. 

The greatness of God is infinite ; for while with one die 
man impresses many coins and all are exactly alike, the 
King of kings, the Holy One — blessed be He ! — with one die 
impresses the same image (of Adam) on all men, and yet 
not one of them is like his neighbor. So that every one 
ought to say, ' For myself is the world created.' 

' He caused the lame to mount on the back of the blind, 
and judged them both as one.' Antonius said to the Rabbi, 
' Body and soul might each plead right of acquittal at the 

10 



146 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

day of judgment.' ' How so?' he asked. ' The body might 
plead that it was the soul that had sinned, and urge saying, 
f See, since the departure of the soul I have lain in the grave 
as still as a stone.' And the soul might plead, 'It was the 
body that sinned, for since the day I left it, I have flitted 
about in the air as innocent as a bird.' To which the Rabbi 
replied and said ' Whereunto this thing is like, I will tell 
thee in a parable. It is like unto a king who had an orchard 
with some fine young fig trees planted in it. He set two 
gardeners to take care of them, of whom one was lame and 
the other blind. One day the lame one said to the blind, 
? I see some fine figs in the garden ; come take me on thy 
shoulders and we will pluck them and eat them.' By and by 
the lord of the garden came, and missing the fruit from the 
fig trees, began to make inquiry after them. The lame one, 
to excuse himself, plead, ' I have no legs to walk with ;' and 
the blind one, to excuse himself, plead, f I have no eyes to 
see with.' What did the lord of the garden do? He caused 
the lame to mount upon the back of the blind, and judged 
them both as one. So likewise will God reunite soul and 
body, and judge them both as one together ; as it is written 
(Ps. 50 : 4) , ' He shall call to the heavens from above, and to 
the earth, that He may judge His people.' { He shall call to 
the heavens from above,' that alludes to the soul, 'and to 
the earth, that He may judge His people,' that refers to the 
body. . . . 

One thing obtained with difficulty is far better than a hun- 
dred things procured with ease. 

It is written (Gen. 28 : 2), 'And he took from the stones 
of the place;' and again it is written (ver. 18), 'And he 
took the stone.' Rabbi Isaac says this teaches that all these 
stones gathered themselves together into one place, as if 
each were eager that the saint should lay his head upon it. 
It happened, as the Rabbis tell us, that all the stones were 
swallowed up by one another, and thus merged into one 
stone. . . . Rabbi Yehudah tells us that Rav says, a 
man should never absent himself from the lecture hall, not 
even for one hour ; for the above Mishnah had been taught 
at college for many years, but the reason of it had never 
been made plain till the hour when Rabbi Chanina ben Aka- 
via came and explained it. (The Mishnah alluded to is 
short and simple, viz., Where is it taught that a ship is clean 
to the touch? From Prov. 30 : 19, 'The way of a ship in 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 147 

the midst of the sea' (i. e., as the sea is clean to the touch, 
therefore a ship must also be clean to the touch) .... 
f Like the hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces ' (Jer. 28 : 
29). As a hammer divideth fire into many sparks, so one 
verse of Scripture has many meanings and many explanations. 
" And the frog (sing, no.) came up (also sing.) and cov- 
ered the land of Egypt." (Exod. 8 : 1). " There was but 
one frog," said Rabbi Elazar, "And she so multiplied as to 
fill the whole land of Egypt." "Yes, indeed," said Rabbi 
Akiva, " there was, as you say, but one frog, but she her- 
self was so large as to fill all the land of Egypt." Where- 
upon Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah said unto him, "Akiva, 
what business hast thou with Haggadah ? Be off with thy 
legends, and get thee to the laws thou art familiar with 
about plagues and tents. Though thou sayest right in this 
matter, for there was only one frog, but she croaked so loud 
that the frogs came from everywhere else to her croaking." 

Rabbi Levi contends that Manasseh has no portion in the 
world to come while Rabbi Yehudah maintains that he has ; 
and each supports his conclusion in contradiction of the 
other, from one and the same Scripture text. . . 

He who observes but one precept secures for himself an 
advocate, and he who commits one single sin procures for 
himself an accuser. ... He who learns from another 
one chapter, one halachah, one verse, or one word, or even 
a single letter, is bound to respect him. ... " Repent 
one day before thy death." In relation to which Rabbi 
Eliezer was asked by his disciples, "How is a man to re- 
pent one day before his death, since he does not know on 
what day he shall die ? " "So much more the reason is 
there," he replied, "that he should repent to-day, lest he 
die the day after : and thus will all his days be penitential 
ones." A priest who is blind in one eye should not be 
judge of the plague ; for it is said (Lev. 13 :12), " Where- 
soever the priest (with both eyes) looketh." 

Two. 

Rabbi Ami says, "Knowledge is of great price, for it is 
placed between two divine names, as it is written (1 Sam. 
2:3), "A God of knowledge is the Lord," and therefore 
mercy is to be denied to him who has no knowledge ; for it 



148 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

is written (Isa. 27 : 11), "It is a people of no understand- 
ing, therefore He that hath made them will not have mercy 
on them." . . . 

When the Holy One — blessed be He ! — remembers that His 
children are in trouble amongst the nations of the world, 
He drops two tears into the great ocean, the noise of which 
startles the world from one end to the other, and causes the 
earth to quake. 

If speech is worth one sela (a small coin so called), silence 
is worth two. . . , 

Given two dry firebrands and one piece of green wood, 
the dry will set fire to the green. 

With two dogs they caught the lion. . . 

Where are we told that when two sit together and study 
the law the Shechinah is with them? In Mai. 3 : 16, where 
it is written, "They that feared the Lord spake often one 
to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it." 

The Kabbis teach concerning the two kidneys in man, that 
one counsels him to do good and the other to do evil ; and 
it appears that the former is situated on the right side and 
the latter on the left. Hence it is written (Eccl. 10 : 2), 
"A wise man's heart is at his right hand, but a fool's heart 
is at his left." 

Adam had two faces ; for it is said (Ps. 139 : 5), "Thou 
hast made me behind and before." . 

"If Mordecai, before whom thou hast begun to fall, be of 
the seed of the Jews, expect not to prevail against him, but 
falling, thou shalt fall." (Esth. 6 : 13.) Wherefore these 
two fallings? They told Haman, saying, " This nation is 
likened to the dust, and is also likened to the stars, when 
they are down, they are down even to the dust, but when 
they begin to rise, they rise even to the stars." . 

On the day when Isaac was weaned, Abraham made a 
great feast, to which he invited all the people of the land. 
Not all who came to enjoy the feast believed in the alleged 
occasion of its celebration, for some said contemptuously, 
" This old couple have adopted a foundling, and provided a 
feast to persuade us that the child is their own offspring." 
What did Abraham do? He invited all the great men of 
the day, and Sarah invited their wives, who brought their 
infants, but not their nurses along with them. On this oc- 
casion Sarah's breast became like two fountains, for she 
supplied, of her own body, nourishment to all the children. 



Symbolism, Fetiohism, and Interpretation. 149 

Still some were unconvinced, and said, " Shall a child be 
born to one that is a hundred years old, and shall Sarah, 
who is ninety years old, bear?" (Gen. 17: 17.) Where- 
upon, to silence this objection, Isaac's face was changed, so 
that it became the very picture of Abraham's ; then one and 
all exclaimed, "Abraham begat Isaac." . . . 

"And I will make thy windows of agates " (Isa. 54 : 12). 
Two of the angels in Heaven, Gabriel and Michael, once 
disputed about this : one maintained that the stone should 
be an onyx, and the other asserted it should be a jasper ; 
but the Holy One — blessed be He ! — said unto them, "Let it 
be as both say, }*HD1 r*"D>" which, abbreviated, is *"O l "0 

(*. e., an agate). 

For two to sit together and have no discourse about the 
law, is to sit in the seat of the scornful. 

It is thus that Rav Joseph taught what is meant when it 
is written in Isaiah 12:1, "I will praise Thee, O Lord, be- 
cause Thou wast angry with me : Thine anger will depart 
and Thou wilt comfort me." "The text applies," he says, 
< * to two men who were going abroad on a mercantile enter- 
prise, one of whom, having had a thorn run into his foot, 
had to forego his intended journey, and began in conse- 
quence to utter reproaches and blaspheme. Having after- 
wards learned that the ship in which his companions had 
sailed had sunk to the bottom of the sea, he confessed his 
short-sightedness and praised God for his mercy." 

Three. 

The night is divided into three watches, and at each watch 
the Holy One — blessed be He ! — sits and roars like a lion ; as 
it is written (Jer, 25 : 30), "The Lord will roar from on 
high. . . . roaring, He will roar over his habitation." 
The marks by which the division of the night is recognized 
are these : In the first watch the ass brays ; in the second 
the dog barks ; and in the third the babe is at the breast 
and the wife converses with her husband. . . . 

Rav Yehudah used to say, "Three things shorten a man's 
days, and years : 1. Neglecting to read the law when it is 
given to him for that purpose ; seeing it is written (Deut. 
30 : 20), 'For He (who gave it) is thy life and the length 
of thy days.' 2. Omitting to repeat the customary bene- 
diction over a cup of blessing ; for it is written (Gen. 12:3), 



150 Pathological Aspects of Religions, 

'And I will bless them that bless thee.' 3. And the assump- 
tion of a Rabbinical air ; for Rabbi Chama bar Chanena says, 
* Joseph died before any of his brethren, because he domi- 
neered over them.' . 

Three dreams come to pass : That which is dreamed in 
the morning ; that which is also dreamed by one's neighbor ; 
and a dream which is interpreted within a dream ; to which 
some add, one that is dreamed by the same person twice ; 
as it is written (Gen. 41 : 32), "And for that the dream was 
doubled unto Pharaoh twice." . 

Three things tranquilize the mind of man : — Melody, 
scenery, and sweet odor. Three things develop the mind 
of man : — A fine house, a handsome wife, and elegant fur- 
niture. The Rabbis have taught that there are three sorts 
of dropsy: — Thick, resulting from sin; bloated, inconse- 
quence of insufficient food ; and thin, due to sorcery. 

Food remains for three days in the stomach of the dog, 
because God knew that his food would be scanty. 

He who is born on the third day of the week will be rich 
and amorous. . . . There are three whom the Holy One 
— blessed be He ! — abhorreth ; He who says one thing but 
thinks another ; he who might bear witness in favor of his 
neighbor but refrains from doing so, and he who, having seen 
his neighbor act disgracefully, goes and appears singly as a 
witness against him. (Thus only condemning but not convict- 
ing him, as the law requires two witnesses.) As, for exam- 
ple, when Toviah transgressed and Zigud appeared against 
him singly, before Rav Pappa, and Rav Pappa ordered this 
witness to receive forty stripes save one in return. "What !" 
said he, ff Toviah has sinned, and should Zigud be flogged?" 
" Yes," replied the Rabbi, "for by testifying singly against 
him thou bringesthim only into repute." (Deut. 19 : 15.). . 

Beware of these three things : — do not sit too much, for 
it brings on hemorrhoids ; do not stand too much, for it is 
bad for the heart, do not walk too much, for it is hurtful to 
the eyes. But sit a third, stand a third, and walk a third. . . 

Three things weaken the strength of man : — Fear, travel, 
and sin. Fear, as it is written (Ps. 38: 10), "My heart 
palpitates, my strength faileth me." Travel, as it is written 
(Ps. 102 : 23), " He hath weakened my strength in the way." 
. . . Sin, as it is written (Ps. 31 : 10), "My strength 
faileth me because of my iniquity." . 

Abraham was three years old when he first learned to 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 151 

know his Creator; as it is said (Gen. 26 : 5), "Because 
(Dpi?) Abraham obeyed my voice." 1 

Over three does God weep every day : — Over him who is 
able to study the law but neglects it ; over him who studies 
it amidst difficulties hard to overcome ; and over the ruler 
who behaves arrogantly towards the community he should 
protect. . . . 

The Rabbis teach that there are three that have a share in 
a man ; God, and his father and mother. The father's part 
consists of all that is white in him — the bones, the veins, 
the nails, the brain, and the white of the eye. The mother's 
part consists of all that is red in him — the skin, the flesh, 
the hair, and the black part of the eye. God's part consists 
of the breath, the soul, the physiognomy, sight and hearing, 
speech, motive power, knowledge, understanding and wis- 
dom. And when the time comes that man should depart 
from the world God takes away His part and leaves those 
which belong to the father and mother. Rav Pappa says, 
"This is the meaning of the proverb, * Shake off the salt 
and throw the flesh to the dogs.'" 2 

Mr. Hershon continues in this wise to cite quotations in 
which numbers ranging to a million and upwards occur. 
The following are only a few of the more interesting ones. 

A male hyena after seven years becomes a bat ; this after 
seven years, a vampire ; this after seven years a nettle ; this 
after seven years more, a thorn ; and this again after seven 
years is turned into a demon. If a man does not devoutly 
bow during the repetition of the daily prayer which com- 
mences, " we reverently acknowledge," his spine after seven 
years becomes a serpent. 

The following quotation illustrates Jewish loyalty to their 
God.. Once a Jewish mother with her seven sons suffered 
martyrdom at the hands of the Emperor. The sons, when 
ordered by the latter to do homage to the idols of the Empire, 

1 The conclusion arrived at here is founded on interpreting the Hebrew 
etters of the word rendered "because 11 numerically, in which 5? =70, 

= 100, 2 =2, making a total of one hundred and seventy-two; so that 
he sense of the text is, " Abraham obeyed my voice one hundred and 
seventy-two years. Now Abraham died when he was a hundred and 
seventy-five, therefore he must have been only three when he began to 
serve the Lord. . . . 

2 Rashi 1 s explanatory note is this: "Shake off the salt from the flesh 
and it becomes fit only for dogs. The soul is the salt which preserves 
the body; when it departs the body putrefies. 1 ' 



152 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

declined, and justified their disobedience by quoting each a 
simple text from the sacred Scriptures. When the seventh 
was brought forth, it is related that Caesar, for appearance 
sake, offered to spare him if only he would stoop and pick 
up a ring from the ground which had been dropped on pur- 
pose. " Alas for thee, O Csesar !" answered the boy; " if 
thou art so zealous for thine honor, how much more zealous 
ought we to be for the honor of the Holy One — blessed be 
He !" On his being led away to the place of execution, the 
mother craved and obtained leave to give him a farewell kiss. 
"Go, my child," said she, "and say to Abraham, Thou 
didst build an altar for the sacrifice of one son, but I have 
erected altars for seven sons." She then turned away and 
threw herself down headlong from the roof and expired, 
when the echo of a voice was heard exclaiming (Ps. 113 : 9), 
"The joyful mother of children" (or, the mother of the 
children rejoiceth). 

The next quotation reminds us of some of the medieval 
prescriptions for diseases. 

For tertian fever take seven small grapes from seven differ- 
ent vines ; seven threads from seven different pieces of cloth ; 
seven nails from seven different bridges ; seven handfuls of 
ashes from seven different fire-places ; seven bits of pitch 
from seven ships, one piece from each ; seven scrapings of 
dust from as many separate doorways ; seven cummin seeds ; 
seven hairs from a lower jaw of a dog, and tie them upon the 
throat with a papyrus fibre. 

Here is an account of the juggling powers of some of the 
Tanaim. It is related of Rabbi Shimon, the son of Gama- 
liel, that at the rejoicing during the festival of the drawing 
of water on the Feast of Tabernacles, he threw eight flaming 
torches, one after the other in quick succession into the air, 
and caught them again as they descended without suffering 
one to touch another. He also (in fulfillment of Ps. 102 : 
14) stooped and kissed the stone floor, supporting himself 
upon his two thumbs only, — a feat which no one else could 
perform. And this is what is termed stooping properly. 

Levi once in the presence of Rabbi (the Holy) conjured 
with eight knives. Samuel in the presence of Shavur, the 
King (of Persia, Sapor I, 240-273) performed the same feat 
with eight cups of wine. Abaii in the presence of Rava did 
likewise with eight eggs ; some say with four only. The 
curious will be interested to know how God spends his days. 



Syynbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 153 

Twelve hours there are in the day : — The first three, the 
Holy One — blessed be He ! — employs in studying the law, 
the next three He sits and judges the whole world ; the third 
three He spends in feeding all the world ; during the last 
three hours He sports with the leviathan ; as it is said (Ps. 
104 : 26) , * * This leviathan Thou hast created to play with it." 
(During the night we are told that He rides on a swift 
cherub over eighteen thousand worlds.) 

The following will be interesting to pedagogues. 

Twenty-five children is the highest number there should 
be in a class for elementary instruction. There should be 
an assistant appointed, if there be forty in number, and if 
fifty, there should be two competent teachers. Rava says, 
" If there be two teachers in a place, one teaching the chil- 
dren more than the other, the one that teaches less is not to 
be dismissed, because if so, the other is liable to lapse into 
negligence also." Rav Deimi of Nehardaa, on the other 
hand, thinks the dismissal of the former will make the latter 
all the more eager to teach more, both out of fear lest he 
also be dismissed, and out of gratitude that he has been pre- 
ferred to the other. Mar says, "the emulation of the 
Scribes (or teachers) increaseth wisdom." Rava also says — 
" When there are two teachers, one teaching much but super- 
ficially, and one teaching thoroughly but not so much, the 
former is to be preferred, for the children will, in the long 
run, improve most by learning much." Rav Deimi of Ne- 
hardaa, however, thinks the latter is to be preferred, for a 
mistake or an error once learned is difficult to unlearn ; as it 
is written in 1 Kings 11 : 16, " For six" months did Joab re- 
main there with all Israel, until he cut off every male C"0| 
zachar) in Edom." When David asked Joab why he killed 
only the males and not the females, he replied, " Because it 
is written in Deut. 25: 19, * Thou shalt blot out (*)2t 
p^DJ7) tne ma ^ e portion of Amelek.'" " But" said David, 

"We read (*OT, zeichar) 'the remembrance of Amelek.' " 
To this Joab replied, " My teacher taught me to read *)3J, 
and not *^T " (zachar and not zeichar) i e., male and not 
remembrance. The teacher of Joab was sent for, and being 
found guilty of having taught his pupil in a superficial man- 
ner, he was condemned to be beheaded. The poor teacher 
pleaded in vain for his life, for the King's judgment was 
based on Scripture (Jer. 48 : 10), " Cursed be he that doeth 



154 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

the work of the Lord deceitfully, and Cursed be he that 
keepeth back his sword from blood." 

That marriages are arranged in heaven may be seen from 
the following. 

Forty days before the formation of a child a Bath Kol 
proclaims, " The daughter of so-and-so shall marry the son 
of so-and-so ; the premises of so-and-so shall be the prop- 
erty of so-and-so." 

Here is an example of Rabbinical ingenuity : 

Rabbi Meir had a disciple named Sumchus, who in every 
case assigned forty-eight reasons why one thing should be 
called clean, and why another should be called unclean, 
though Scripture declared the contrary. We give the next 
without comment : 

An egg once dropped out of a nest of a bird called Bar 
Yuchnei, which deluged sixty cities and swept away three 
hundred cedars. The question therefore arose, "Does the 
bird generally throw out its eggs?" Rav Ashi replied, 
" No ; that was a rotten one." 

There are very many other stories like these in the Tal- 
mud, not found in Mr. Hershon's book. The following may 
be found in Mr. Barclay's " The Talmud." 

It is related that a Rabbi once saw in a desert a flock of 
geese so fat that their feathers fell off, and the rivers flowed 
in fat. He said to them, " Shall we have part of you in the 
world to come ? " One of them lifted up a wing and the 
other a leg, to signify the parts we shall have. We should 
otherwise have had all parts of these geese, but that their 
sufferings are owing to us. It is our iniquities that have 
delayed the coming of the Messiah, and these geese suffer 
greatly by , reason of their excessive fat, which daily in- 
creases, and will increase until the Messiah comes." Rabba 
bar Chama says that he once saw " a bird so tall that its head 
reached the sky, and its legs to the bottom of the ocean." 
The water in which it stood was so deep that a carpenter's 
axe which had fallen in seven years before had not yet 
reached the bottom. He also saw "a frog as large as a 
village containing sixty houses." This frog was swallowed 
up by a serpent, and this serpent in time by a crow ; this 
crow flew and perched upon a cedar, and this cedar was as 
broad as sixteen wagons abreast. There is also an account 
of a fish which was killed by a worm. This fish, when 
driven ashore, destroyed sixty cities, and sixty cities ate of 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 155 

it, and sixty cities salted it, and with its bones the ruined 
cities were rebuilt. Stories are also told of fishes with eyes 
like the moon, and of horned fishes three hundred miles in 
length. These stories are intended to confirm the text, 
" They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in 
great waters ; these see the works of the Lord and his won- 
ders in the deep." It should be added that many of these 
absurd stories have hidden mystical meanings which were 
intended only for the initiated. 

This is the story of the origin of the Septuagint : 

Ptolemy, the King (of Egypt) assembled seventy-two 
elders of Israel and lodged them in seventy-two separate 
chambers, but did not tell them why he did so. Then he 
visited each one in turn and said, "Write out for me the 
law of Moses your Rabbi." The Holy One — blessed be 
He ! — went and counselled the minds of every one of them, 
so that they all agreed, and wrote, " God created in the be- 
ginning" (instead of "In the beginning (he) created God," 
which is the literal translation). 

That the Rabbis were men of great learning may be seen 
from the following : 

The venerable Hillel had eighty disciples, thirty of whom 
were worthy that the Shechinah should rest upon them, as 
it rested upon Moses our Rabbi ; and thirty of them were 
worthy that the sun should stand still (for them), as it did 
for Joshua the son of Nun ; and twenty of them stood mid- 
way in worth. The greatest of them all was Jonathan ben 
Uzziel and the least of them all was Rabbi Yochanan ben 
Zacchai. It is said of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zacchai that he 
did not leave unstudied the Bible, the Mishna, the Gemara, 
the constitutions, the legends, the minutias of the law, the 
niceties of the scribes, the arguments a fortiori and from 
similar premises, the theory of the change of the moon, the 
Gematria, the parable of the unripe grapes and the foxes, 
the language of demons, of palm-trees, and of ministering 
angels. 

Here is another interesting illustration of Rabbinical 
exegesis : 

When Adam observed that his sin was the cause of the 
decree which made death universal he fasted one hundred 
and thirty years, abstained all that space from intercourse 
with his wife, and wore girdles of fig-leaves round his loins. 
All these years he lived under divine displeasure, and begat 



156 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

devils, demons and spectres ; as it is said (Gen. 5:3), 
"And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begat in 
his own likeness, after his image," which implies that until 
the close of those years, his offspring was not after his own 
image. 

Here is an account of a spirited debate among the Rabbis, 
in which God Himself was defeated with quotations from 
His own law. 

There was once a dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and the 
Mishnic sages as to whether a baking oven, constructed from 
certain materials, and of a particular shape, was clean or 
unclean. The former decided that it was clean, but the 
latter was of a contrary opinion. Having replied to all the 
objections the sages had brought against his decision, and 
finding that they still refused to acquiesce, the Rabbi turned 
to them and said, "If the Halacha (the law) is according to 
my decision, let this carob-tree attest." Whereupon the 
carob-tree rooted itself up and transplanted itself to a dis- 
tance of one hundred, some say four hundred yards from 
the spot. But the sages demurred and said, "We cannot 
admit the evidence of a carob-tree." "Well, then," said 
Rabbi Eleizer, ' 'Let this running brook be a proof ; " and 
the brook at once reversed its natural course and flowed 
back. The sages refused to admit this proof also. "Then 
let the walls of the college bear witness that the law is ac- 
cording to my decision ;" upon which the walls began to 
bend, and were about to fall, when Rabbi Joshuah inter- 
posed and rebuked them saying, "If the disciples of the 
sages wrangle with each other in the Halacha, what is that 
to you? Be ye quiet ! " Therefore, out of respect to Rabbi 
Joshuah, they did not fall, and out of respect of Rabbi 
Eliezer they did not resume their former upright position, 
but remained toppling, which they continue to do to this 
day. Then said Rabbi Eliezer to the sages, " Let Heaven 
itself testify that the Halacha is according to my judgment." 
And a Bath Kol, or a voice from heaven, was heard saying, 
"What have ye to do with Rabbi Eleizer? for the Halacha 
is on every point according to his decision ! " Rabbi Josh- 
uah then stood up and proved from Scripture that even a 
voice from heaven was not to be regarded, "For Thou, O 
God, didst long ago write down in the law which Thou 
gavest on Sinai (Exod. 23 : 2), ' Thoushalt follow the mul- 
titude,'" (See context.) We have it on the testimony of 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 157 

Elijah the prophet, given to Rabbi Nathan on an oath, that 
it was with reference to this dispute about the oven God 
Himself confessed and said, 1J3 ^in^J ^JD "Ulnm, " M y 
children have vanquished me ! My children have van- 
quished me ! " 

The following remarkable conclusion is reached by Ge- 
matria : The precept concerning fringes is as weight}' as all 
the other precepts put together ; for it is written, says Rashi 
(Num. 15 : 39), "and remember all the commandments of 
the Lord." Now the numerical value of the word rV!n$> 
" fringes," is six hundred, and this with eight threads and 
five knots makes six hundred and thirteen (the number of 
precepts). 

The following extract shows that the Rabbis were not un- 
acquainted with scientific apparatus. 

Rabbon Gamliel had a hollow tube, through which, when 
he looked, he could distinguish a distance of two thousand 
cubits, whether by land or sea. By the same tube he could 
ascertain the depth of a valley or the height of a palm-tree. 

Here is an example of d posteriori reasoning. 

Tradition records that the ladder (mentioned Gen. 28 : 12) 
was eighty thousand miles wide, for it is written, "And be- 
hold the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. 
Angels ascending being in the plural, cannot be fewer than 
two at a time, and so likewise must those descending, so 
that when they passed they were four abreast at least. In 
Daniel 10:6 it is said of the angel, "His body was like 
Tarshish," and there is a story that Tarshish extended two 
thousand miles. 

A similar illustration, not given by Mr. Hershon, may be 
found in the Haggadah for Passover. It is as follows : 

Rabbi Jose, the Galilean, said, " From whence art thou 
authorized to assert, that the Egyptians were afflicted with 
ten plagues in Egypt : and upon the sea they were smitten 
with fifty plagues?" To which he answered, " in Egypt, it 
is said, « And the magicians said unto Pharaoh, this is the 
finger of God ;' but at the sea it is said, * And Israel saw the 
mighty hand wherewith the Lord smote the Egyptians, etc' " 
Now (Rabbi Jose argues), " If by the finger only they were 
smitten with ten plagues, it is deducible that in Egypt they 
were smitten with ten plagues ; and at the sea, they Avere 
smitten with fifty plagues. 

Rabbi Eliezer proves from the passage, " He sent forth 



158 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

against them (1) fierceness of his anger, wrath, (2) indig- 
nation, (3) trouble, (4) and evil angels, " that every plague 
consisted of four different plagues, and therefore in Egypt 
they were afflicted with forty plagues, and at the sea with 
two hundred plagues. 

Here is a little Talmudic demonology. Abba Benjamin 
says, " If our eye were permitted to see the malignant spir- 
its that beset us, we could not rest on account of them. ' ' 
Abaii has said, "They outnumber us, they surround us as 
the earthed-up soil on our garden-beds." Kav Hunna says, 
" Every one has a thousand at his left side and ten thousand 
at his right. " (Ps. 91 : 7.) Rava adds, " The crowding at 
the schools is caused by their pushing in ; they cause the 
weariness which the Rabbis experience in their knees, and 
even wear out their clothes by rubbing against them. If 
one would discover the traces of their presence let him sift 
some ashes upon the floor at his bedside, and next morning 
he will see as it were, the footmarks of fowls on the surface. 
But if one would see the demons themselves, he must burn 
to ashes the afterbirth of a first-born black kitten, and then 
put a little of the ashes into his eyes, and he will not fail to 
see them, etc." 

These brief disjointed extracts taken out of their proper 
settings can only give, as has already been said, a very mea- 
gre and inadequate conception of the twelve folio volumes 
of the Talmud, but they will at least indicate the wide cyclo- 
pedic range of subjects treated, and will enable the reader 
to see the fairness of Mr. Barclay's estimate when he says, 
" Some of its sayings are of touching beauty. . . . and 
some are blasphemous. But mixed up as they are together, 
they form an extraordinary monument of ' human industry, 
human wisdom, and human folly.'" But what interests us 
most of all is that the Rabbis claimed, and the orthodox Jews 
of to-day believe, that the Talmud is as sacred as the Penta- 
teuch itself, and that it was taught to Moses during his forty 
days stay on Mount Sinai, which is proven by Rabbi Shimon 
ben Lakish from the passage, " And I will give thee tablets 
of stone, and the law, and the commandment, which I have 
written to teach them (Exod. 24:12). " ' Tables,' " says 
the Rabbi, " are the Decalogue, ' law' is the Scripture, and 
1 the commandments ' is the Mishna ; * which I have written ' 
is the Prophets and the Hagiographa ; ' to teach them ; ' that 
is the Gemara : and this teaches us that all these were given 



Symbolism, Fetiehism, and Interpretation. 159 



to Moses on Sinai, and * are the words of the living God.'" 
In other words the Talmud is the unfolding of the Scripture, 
the full grown flower of which the latter w T as the bud. The 
Talmud, therefore, is even of greater value than the Scrip- 
ture. If the latter be compared to water say the Rabbis, 
the Mishna is wine, and the Gemara mulled wine, or if it be 
compared to salt, the Mishna is pepper, and the Gemara is 
spice, and so on. Rav goes so far as to say that " He who 
leaves a matter of Halachah for a matter of Scripture shall 
nevermore have peace ; ' ? to which the Shemuel adds, " Aye, 
and he who also leaves the Talmud for the Mishna." Rabbi 
Yochanan says, " The words of the scribes are more highly 
valued than the words of the law ; ' ' and Rabbi Chanina 
adds, " The words of the elders are more important than the 
words of the prophets." 

We thus see how the sturdy oak which grew up in the 
wilderness and was transplanted into Palestine and cared for 
by the great Prophets and inspired teachers became in time 
completely covered and hidden from view by the clinging 
vines, which gradually sapped its life-giving forces and ap- 
propriated to themselves the honor and reverence due their 
supporter. 1 "It is," as Richard Baxter well said, "the 
devil 's last method to undo by overdoing. ' ' 

In vain did the early Prophets thunder against the substi- 
tution of legalism, letter-worship, sacrifices, and burnt offer- 
ings for true religiosity. 2 In vain did that great religious 
genius and reformer reprove the scribes and Pharisees whom 
he compared to "whited sepulchres, which indeed appear 
beautiful, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all 
uncleanness." 3 In vain did he warn his disciples and ad- 
herents against following after them, against having Rabbis, 
or fathers, or masters ; against making a fetich of the letter 
of the law rather than observing as sacred its spirit. — " The 
letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive. ' ' We say in vain, 
because all these perversions are still among us as they were 
twenty centuries ago. One half the Christian world still 
adores an infallible Pope, and a large part of the other half 
still believes in the infallibility and literal Divine Author- 
ship of the Bible, the writers of Scripture being regarded, 

1 See Farrar: Hist, of Interpretation, pp. 48-49. 

2 See I Sam. 15: 22; Ps. 51: 16; Is. 1: 11; Amos 5: 21, 22; Jer. 7,22, 23; 
Mic. 6: 6-9. Ezek. 20:25. 

3 Matt. 23: 27. See also Tolstoy: Essays and Letters, pp. 300 ff. 



160 Pathological Aspects of Religions, 

as they were in the 17th century "Amanuenses of God, 
hands of Christ, Scribes and notaries of the Holy Spirit, living 
and writing pens. " 1 It is interesting to note that the Mo- 
hammedans make similar claims for the Koran. 

The Qabala. 

The Mishna and the Gemara, however, were not the only 
vines which strangled the Bible and robbed it of its birth- 
right. There were others as strong and more vicious than 
the former, namely, the Midrashim, "of which the most 
celebrated are nothing but catenae of Talmudic passages, ' ' 
and the Qabala or Kabbalah, which was the esoteric Jewish 
doctrine. The word Qabala signifies " a thing received, " 
in other words tradition. The claims of the Qabala as re- 
garding its origin and development are even more extravagant 
than that of the Talmud. According to its followers, Dr. 
Ginsburg tells us in his Essay on the Kabbalah, "The 
Kabbalah was first taught by God himself to a select com- 
pany of angels, who formed a theosophic school in Paradise. 
After the Fall the angels most graciously communicated this 
heavenly doctrine to the disobedient child of earth, to fur- 
nish the protoplasts with the means of returning to their 
pristine nobility and felicity. From Adam it passed over 
to Noah, and then to Abraham, the friend of God, who emi- 
grated with it to Egypt, where the patriarch allowed a por- 
tion of this mysterious doctrine to ooze out. It was in this 
way that the Egyptians obtained some knowledge of it, and 
the other Eastern nations could introduce it into their phil- 
osophical systems. Moses, who was learned in all the wis- 
dom of Egypt, was first initiated into the Kabbalah in the 
land of his birth, but became most proficient in it during his 
wanderings in the wilderness, where he not only devoted to 
it the leisure hours of the whole forty years, but received 
lessons in it from one of the angels. By the aid of this 
mysterious science the lawgiver was enabled to solve the 
difficulties which arose during his management of the Israel- 
ites, in spite of the pilgrimages, wars, and frequent miseries 
of the nation. He covertly laid down the principles of this 
secret doctrine in the first four books of Pentateuch, but 
withheld them from Deuteronomy. Moses also initiated the 

1 See Farrar: loc. cit., p. 373. 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 161 

seventy elders into the secrets of this doctrine, and they 
again transmitted them from hand to hand. Of all who 
formed the unbroken line of tradition, David and Solomon 
were the most deeply initiated into the Kabbalah. No one, 
however, dared to write it down, till Schimeon ben Jochai, 
who lived at the time of the destruction of the second tem- 
ple. . . . After his death, his son, Rabbi Eleazar, and 
his secretary, Rabbi Abba, as well as his disciples, collated 
Rabbi Schimeon ben Jochai's treatises, and out of these 
composed the celebrated work called Z H R, Zohar, * splen- 
dor, ' which is the grand storehouse of Kabbalism. " 1 

The Qabala, though usually classified under the headings, 
practical, literal, unwritten, and dogmatic, may for conveni- 
ence sake be divided into the symbolical and real Qabala. 
The symbolical Qabala, divided into the three parts, "Gem- 
atria, " " Notricon, ' ' ' ' Temurah ' ' teaches how the secrets 
and mysteries of the Bible may be discovered and under- 
stood. Before proceeding to explain each of these parts, it 
is necessary to remind the reader that in Hebrew, as in 
Greek, there are no separate numerical characters, hence 
each letter has its own numerical value, and therefore every 
word is a number and every number can be converted into 
a letter or word. The Gematria is based on this correspon- 
dence between words and numbers. 

The briefest and clearest exposition of the rules and prin- 
ciples of these three parts which we have seen is given by 
Mr. Hershon. We can do no better, therefore, than quote 
him in full. 

"Let us assume for the nonce," he says in explaining 
Gematria, " that a standard numerical value is attached to 
each letter in the English alphabet. A has the value of 1, 
B 2, C 3, D 4, E 5, F 6, G 7, H 8, I 9, J 10, K 20, L 30, 
M 40, N 50, O 60, P 70, Q 80, R 90, S 100, T 200, U 300, 
V 400, W 500, X 1,000, Y 10,000, Z 100,000. And let us 
now assume a point in dispute in order to illustrate how it 
is solved by Gematria. Suppose that the subject of discus- 
sion is the comparative superiority of the Hebrew and Eng- 
lish languages, and Hugo and Baruch are the disputants. 
The former being a Hebrew, holds that the Hebrew is supe- 
rior to the English, * because,' says he, ' the numerical value 
of the letters that form the word Hebrew is 610; 

1 Quoted by S. L. McGregor Mathers: " The Kabbalah Unveiled." 
11 



162 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

whereas the numerical value of English is only 209.' 
The latter being an Englishman, holds, of course, exactly the 
contrary opinion, and argues as follows : 'All the learned 
world must admit that the English is a living language, but 
not so the Hebrew ; and it is written (Eccles. 9 : 4) that 'A 
living dog is better than a dead lion, ' I therefore maintain 
that the English is superior to the Hebrew. ' The dispute 
was referred to an Oxford authority for decision, and a cer- 
tain learned doctor decided it by — "Notricon. " This con- 
sists in forming a decisive sentence composed of words 
whose initial letters are in a given word ; for instance, 
Hebrew: 'iJugo's excels i?aruch's reasoning e very 
w ay. ; English : E nglish nog ood I anguage, i ss carcely 
h armonious ; but Hebrew : 'Holy, e legant, b rilliant, r es- 
onant, e liciting w onder ! ; This is a fair specimen of how 
to get at the secret sense of a word by the rule of Notricon, " 
and now we will proceed to explain "Teniurah. " 

But before he proceeds it is necessary to add that there 
is another form of Notricon which is the exact reverse of 
that which he has given. In this form, the initials or finals, 
or both, or the medials, of a sentence are taken to form a 
word or words. "Thus the Qabala is called Chokhmah 
Nesethrah, " the secret wisdom, " and if we take the initials 
of these two words, Ch and N, we form by the second kind 
of Notricon the word ChN, Chen, " grace." Similarly 
from the initials and finals of the words MI IOHL LNV 
HSH MIMH, Mi Iaulah Leno Ha-Shama-yimah, "Who 
shall go up for us to heaven?" (Deut. 30 : 12), are formed 
MILH, Milan, " circumcision, " and IHYH, the Tetragram- 
maton, implying that God hath ordained circumcision as 
the way to heaven. ' n 

Temurah means permutation. "According to certain 
rules, one letter is substituted for another letter preceding 
or following it in the alphabet, and thus from one word an- 
other word of totally different orthography may be formed. 
Thus the alphabet is bent exactly in half in the middle, and 
one half is put over the other ; and then by changing alter- 
nately the first letter or the first two letters at the beginning 
of the second line, twenty-two commutations are produced. 
These are called the "Table of the Combinations of 
TZIRVP." Tziruph. 

1 S. L. MacGregor Mathers : The Kabbalah Unveiled, p. 9. 



Symbolism, Fetiehism, and Interpretation. 163 

The following will illustrate one of these twenty-two 
methods, called ALBTH, Albath. 

KITChZVHDGBA 
M N S O P Tz Q R Sh Th L 

This is the order in which the Hebrew alphabet runs, 
reading the first line from right to left, the second from left 
to right, with the exception of L which belongs between K 
and M. Now if by Albath we wished to write, " Thou shalt 
not kill," we should have to substitute for Th, B ; for O, 
Ch ; for U, Tz ; and so on, getting the following result ; 
BChTz GLAS IChS MNAA. 

Besides these combinations there is another set of twenty- 
two combinations known as the " Rational Table of Tziruph," 
three " Tables of the Commutations," known respectively 
as the Right, the Averse, and the Irregular ; the method 
called ThShRQ, Thashraq, which is simply writing a word 
backwards, and the " Qabala of the Nine Chambers. M 

In addition to all this ' ' there are certain meanings hidden 
in the shape of the letters ; in the form of a particular letter 
at the end of a word being different from that which it gen- 
erally bears when it is a final letter, or in a letter being writ- 
ten in the middle of a word in a character generally used 
only at the end ; in any letter or letters being written in a 
size smaller or larger than the rest of the manuscript, or in 
a letter being written upside down ; in the variations found 
in the spelling of certain words, which have a letter more in 
some places than they have in others ; in peculiarities ob- 
served in the position of any of the points or accents, and 
in certain expressions supposed to be elliptic or redundant." 1 

The Real Qabala consists of theoretical and practical mys- 
teries. The theoretical mysteries treat about the ten spheres, 
the four worlds, the essence and various names of God and 
of angels, also of the celestial hierarchy and its influences 
and effects on this lower world, of the mysteries of creation, 
of the Maaseh Merkaba, the mystical chariot described by 
the Prophet Ezekiel, of the different orders and offices of 
angels and demons, also of a great many other deep sub- 
jects, too deep for the comprehension of the unlearned. 

The practical Qabala is a branch of the theoretical, and 
treats of the practical use of the mysterious names of God 
and of angels. By uttering properly the Shem-hammepho- 

1 MacGregor: loc. cit., p. 11. 



164 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

rash, i. e., the ineffable name of Jehovah, or the names of 
certain angels, or by the mere repetition of certain Scripture 
texts, miracles and wonders were and still are performed in 
the Jewish world. ' n 

It may be interesting to know that the orthodox Jews 
claim that Christ performed his miracles by the use of the 
Shem-hammephorash. A few quotations, and we shall have 
done with the Qabala. 

In Gen. 49 : 10 " Shiloh come," IBA ShILH is equiva- 
lent to 358, and that is also the numerical value of MShlCh, 
Mashiach. Shiloh is therefore identified with the Messiah. 
Again, because the letters Mashiach and of Nachash, " Ser- 
pent, ' ' are isopsephic, they said that it was the Messiah who 
would bruise the serpent's head. 

In Gen. 25 : 21, the letters of the Hebrew word for * his 
wife ' AShTV, Eshtoi have the value of 707, which is the 
equivalent of the words, ASh VQSh, Ash Vakosh, " fire and 
straw, ' ' and is at once mystically connected with Obadiah, 
verse 11, " the house of Jacob shall be a fire . . . and 
the house of Esau of stubble. "... Because the let- 
ters of Eliezer J s name have the value of 318 it was inferred 
that he alone was equal to all the other 318 servants of 
Abraham. . . . Because in Is. 30 : 18, "Blessed are 
all those that wait upon Him," the value of the word " upon 
Him, " LV, Loi is 36, therefore there are never less than 36 
righteous in the world. . . . Likewise there are 70 
nations of the world because ' ' Gog and Magog ' ' give the 
number 70 ; and there are 903 ways of dying because the 
word for "issues of death," in Ps. 48: 21 ThVTzAVTh 
gives the number 903. . . . The length of a Nazarite's 
vow might be limited to 30 days, because in Num. 6 : 5, "he 
shall be holy, "the word "he shall be " IHIH gives the 
number 30. . . . There are 98 ways of explaining tbe 
law, because in Cant. 2 : 4 the word for " and his banner " 
VDGLV gives the number 49. . . . The law had 613 
precepts because the word for 'incense ' QTRTh gives 613 
. The Day of Atonement was the only day of the 
year on which Satan could bring no accusation because the 
word HSTN, Hassatan gives only 364. 

Moses did not marry an Ethiopian woman (Kushith) but 

1 Hershon: A Talmudic Miscellany, p. 321. 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 165 

a " beautiful " woman, since Kushith yields the number 736 
which is equivalent to " fair of form, ' ' IPhTh-MRAH. 1 

"All the inhabitants of the earth were of one language." 
Gen. 11 : 1. Here AChTh, One,= 409, and is equivalent 
to HQDSh= 409 ; whence it was assumed that Hebrew was 
the primitive tongue. . . . 

Gen. 42:2, "Go down," RDV= 210. Therefore the 
Egyptian bondage lasted 210 years. 

Know thou that the 613 Precepts of the Law form a com- 
pact with the Holy One — blessed be He ! and with Israel, 
as it is often explained in the Zohar. It is written (Exod. 
3 : 15) ZH ShMI VZH ZChRI, Ze Shime Vaze Zichri, 
"This is My name, and this is My memorial." ShMI OM 
IH, "My name," together with "Yeho," amounts numeri- 
cally to 365; VH OM ZChRI, " Vah " together with "My 
memorial" amounts to 248. Here we have the number 613 
in the Holy One — blessed be He ! . . . The soul is a 
portion of God from above, and this is mystically intimated 
by the degrees of RVCh NPhSh ISTShMH, Ruach, Nephesh, 
Nashomo, " breath, spirit, soul, " the initial and final letters 
of which amount to 613, while the middle letters of these 
amount to the number of YHYH ShDI ALHIM, "Jehovah, 
Almighty, Elohim. " . . . The soul of Moses our 
Rabbi — peace be on him ! — embraced all the souls of Israel ; 
as it is said, Moses was equivalent to all Israel. MShH 
RBINV, "Moses our Rabbi," amounts to 613, and YHVH 
ALHI YSRAL, "Lord God of Israel, " also amounts to 
613. 2 

These are sufficient to illustrate Gematria. Here are a 
few extracts to illustrate Notrikon. 

Every letter in the word BRASHITh, "In the beginning," 
is made the initial of a word, and we obtain BRAShlTh 
RAH ALHIM ShIQBLV IShRAL ThYRH, "In the begin- 
ning the Elohim saw that Israel would accept the law. ' ' 

Solomon Meir ben Moses, a Jewish Qabalist, who em- 
braced the Christian faith in 1665, gives six different 
sentences derived from the letters in BRAShlTh by Notri- 
con. The first is BN RVCh AB ShLVShThM IChD 
ThMIM : "The Son, the Spirit, the Father, Their Trinity, 
Perfect Unity. ' ' The second is the same as the first except 

1 Farrar: Hist, of Interpretation, p. 98-100. 

2 Hershon: A Talmudic Miscellany, p. 322. 



166 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

the last word which is ThOBVDV, "Ye shall equally wor- 
ship Their Trinity." The third is BKVEI RAShVNI 
AShR ShMV IShVO ThOBVDV: "Ye shall worship My 
first-born, My first, Whose name is Jesus." The fourth is 
BBVA RBN AShR ShMV IShVO ThOBVDV : "When the 
Master shall come Whose name is Jesus ye shall worship. " 
The fifth is, BThVLH RAVIH ABChR ShThLD IShVO 
ThAShRVH : "I will choose a virgin worthy to bring forth 
Jesus and ye shall call her blessed. ' ' The sixth is, BOVGTh 
BTzPIM ASThThR ShGVPI IShVO ThAKLV : "I will 
hide myself in cake (baked with) coals, for ye shall eat 
Jesus, My Body. " 1 Very many learned Jews of the Mid- 
dle Ages accepted Christianity because of such convincing 
proofs, and many Christian Fathers eagerly seized upon the 
Qabala because, like Mirandola, they thought they found 
more Christianity than Judaism in it. 

* * The sages of truth (the Qabalists) remarked that ADM, 
Adam, contains the initial letters of Adam, David and Mes- 
siah, for after Adam sinned his soul passed into David, and 
the latter having also sinned, it passed into the Messiah." 

"Know thou that Cain's soul passed into Jethro, but his 
spirit into Korah, and his animal soul into the Egyptian. 
This is what Scripture saith, " Cain, " JKM JeKAM, " shall 
be avenged sevenfold. " (Gen. 4 : 24.) The letters JKM 
forming the word which means ' ' shall be avenged, ' ' also 
form the initials of Jethro, Korah, and Mitzri, or Egyptian. 

Cain had robbed the twin sister of Abel, and therefore 
his soul passed into Jethro. Moses was possessed by the 
soul of Abel, and therefore Jethro gave his daughter to 
Moses. 2 This of course is all proven by Notricon. 

In Ps. 21 : 2, " The king shall rejoice in Thy strength, O 
Lord, " refers to " the Messiah " by transposing IShMCh 
(shall rejoice) into Mashiach (Messiah) . In Exodus 23 : 
23, "My angel" MLAKI is transposed into Michael, as 
also is the name Malachi ; " Cherem, " " a ban, " becomes 
racham i ' pity, ' ' implying that there is always room for re- 
pentance ; or into ramach, of which the numerical equiva- 
lent is 248, showing that if a man do not repent the curse 

1 MacGregor Mathers: The Kabbalah Unveiled, p. 8. 

2 Hershon: loc cit., p. 325. 



Symbolism, FeticMsm, and Interpretation. 167 

will smite the 248 parts of the body. There seem to be three 
instances of Temura in the Bible. Thus in Jer. 25 : 26, 41 : 
41, the word Sheshach has always been understood to be a 
cipher for Babel, to which by Athbash it is equivalent. No 
Christian interpreter had any notion what it meant till 
Jerome learnt the secret from his Jewish teacher. Again, 
in Jer. 51 : 1, the meaningless expression, "them that dwell 
in the midst of them that rise up against me J ' becomes lumi- 
nous if for leb-kamai we substitute by Athbash the word 
hasdim, or Chaldeans. Similarly an application of the 
cipher Albam, explains an otherwise mysterious name in Is. 
7:6, Ephraim, Syria, and the son of Remaliah there take 
evil counsel to attack Judah and set up as king " the son of 
Tabeal. ' } Who was this Tabeal whose name never occurs 
elsewhere ? Mr. Cheyne says that ' ' he was evidently a 
Syrian ; the name in Syriac means " God is good," just as 
Tav Eimmon means "Rimmon is good." Dr. Kay even 
conjectures that he was a descendant of Naaman, and others 
that he was a powerful Ephraimite, perhaps Zichri (2 Chron. 
28 : 7). Apply the Albam, however, and for TABL (Ta- 
beal) we get RMLA, which may well be the same as Rema- 
liah, either used by Isaiah as a scornful variation, or because 
it may have been originally the secret watchword of the 
powerful conspiracy. 1 

"Now let us illustrate the subject of IRAH VAHBH, 
* fear and love. ' Fear proceedeth from love and love pro- 
ceedeth from fear. And this you may demonstrate by writ- 
ing their letters one over the other, and then dividing them 
by horizontal and perpendicular lines, thus, HA RI 

HBHA 
Love perfecteth fear, and fear perfecteth love. This is to 
teach thee that both are united together." 2 

There are pages and pages in the "Book of Concealed 
Mystery " which we cannot begin to understand. The mean- 
ing of the book, as its title indicates, was purposely con- 
cealed. The contents of the " Greater Holy Assembly' ' 
will indicate its symbolic character. 1. The Ingress and 
Preface. 2. Of the Condition of the World of Vacancy. 3. 
Concerning the Ancient One, and Macroprosopus, and Con- 
cerning his Parts and especially Concerning His Skull. 4. 

1 Farrar: Hist, of Interpretation, p. 103. 

2 Hershon : Talmudic Miscellany, p. 323. 



168 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

Concerning the Dew or Moisture of the Brain, of the Ancient 
One or Macroprosopus. 5. Further Concerning the Skull of 
Macroprosopus. 6. Concerning the Membrane of the Brain 
of Macroprosopus. 7. Concerning the jhair of Macropros- 
opus. 8. Concerning his Forehead. 9. Eyes. 10. Nose. 11. 
Beard in general. 12. Concerning the Beard of Macropros- 
opus in Particular ; and in the first place concerning its first 
part. 13. Concerning the second part. 14. The third part. 
15. The Fourth part. 16. Fifth part. 17. Sixth part. 18. 
Seventh part. 19. Eighth part. 20. Ninth part. 21. Tenth 
and eleventh parts. 22. Twelfth part. 23. Thirteenth part. 24. 
Conclusion of the matter concerning Macroprosopus. Then 
follow twenty parallel chapters concerning Microprosopus, 
its eyes, nose, beard, etc. The " Lesser Holy Assembly " 
treats of the eyes, nose, beard, brain of the Ancient One and 
other subjects of equal interest and importance. 

What we have here given will suffice to show how deep 
in the mire of bibliolatry, traditionalism, and formalism that 
people, who more than any other had the peculiar genius 
for religion, had sunk. The religion of the living heart 
was gradually superseded by the religion of the dead letter, 
the essentials were either forgotten or despised, while the 
trivialities and accessories, fringes and phylacteries were 
paid all the reverence due Jehovah Himself. 

It is to this complete degeneration, however, that Chris- 
tianity very likely owes its birth. The spirit of religion 
having been driven from the Figure of Israel, left it a mere 
hollow mask, while it withdrew, "and in unnoticed nooks 
wove for herself a new Vesture," in which she reappeared 
and blessed mankind. But this same Vesture, ere many 
centuries were passed, went again "sorrowfully out at el- 
bows. " The history of Judaism, especially the latter part, 
is repeated with remarkable accuracy in the Patristic and 
Scholastic periods of Christianity. The exegesis of the 
Fathers and Schoolmen is no whit less absurd and fanciful 
than that of the Rabbis and Kabbalists ; there are no trivial- 
ities in the latter more puerile and inane than some of the 
questions with which the former frequently busied them- 
selves. For example, How many angels can dance upon 
the point of a pin? Can angels be in two places at 
once? Can many angels be in the same place at once? 
Could Adam, when in the state of innocence, discern the 
essence of angels? Has local distance any effect on the 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 169 

speech of angels ? Is there a definite number of angels ? 
Do they belong to the same genus, and are they composed of 
matter and form? Does the Father beget the Divine Es- 
sence ? Does the Divine Essence beget the Son ? Should 
it be said that Christ is composed or that He consists of two 
natures? Is the word ' ' conflate, " or "commixed," or 
" conglutinate, " or " coagmentate, " or "copulated," or 
* ' f erruminate ' ' the right one to use in speaking of their 
union? 1 Again, like E-. Aqiba, they maintained that every 
part of Scripture admitted of many different interpretations ; 
some, a threefold, others a fourfold, and still others like 
Bonaventura an eightfold interpretation. Water, for ex- 
ample, may, tropologically, stand for sorrow, or wisdom, or 
heresies, or prosperity; allegorically, it may refer to bap- 
tism, nations, or grace ; anagogically, to eternal happiness. 
"Let there be light" may mean historically, according to 
Thomas Aquinas, an act of creation; allegorically, "Let 
Christ be love;" anagogically, "May we be led by Christ 
to glory;" and, tropologically, "May we be mentally il- 
lumined by Christ. ' ' 2 

The seven hermeneutic rules of Hillel are paralleled by 
the seven rules of Tichonius, which St. Augustine indorsed 
so warmly, and the application of which gave all sorts of 
absurd and irrational results. Thus, Is. 61 : 10 . . 
" as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, ' ' applies 
to Christ, but the following clause, "and as a bride adorn- 
eth herself with jewels," applies only to the Church. Again, 
in Cant. 1:5, "I am black but comely," the first epithet re- 
fers to false Christians, the second to true Christians. 3 

Sunk still deeper in the mire of mad symbolism or alle- 
gory is a work written by the Bishop of Treves about the 
year 450, entitled Liber Formularum Spiritalis Intellig en- 
tice, in which, among other things, the "head of Grod" 
represents the essential divinity ; the " hair" the Holy An- 
gels or the elect ; the " eyelids" His incomprehensible judg- 
ments ; His « « mouth " Christ ; His ' « lips ' ' the agreement of 
the Old and New Testaments, etc. 4 

Just as blind, too, was their idolization of the letter of 
the Book, not the original, however, but the imperfect and 
often arbitrary translation of the Seventy. For Tertullian, 

1 See Farrar: loc. cit., pp. 291-294. * Ibid., p. 23. 

2 Ibid., p. 295. * Ibid., p. 24. 



170 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

every word in the Bible was uttered by God and dictated 
by the Holy Ghost. Its cosmogony, chronology, anthropol- 
ogy, and history were infallible. So far, indeed, did his 
literalism take him that he inferred from such phrases as 
"the hand of God" the corporeality of God. This is also 
true of the Egyptian monks. 1 Even as late as the seven- 
teenth century, as has been noted before, the Bible was 
looked upon as " a divine effluence," " a part of God, " and 
one writer went so far as to discuss whether it could be 
called a creature, but concluded that it could not. 

"During the whole of this (Scholastic) period," writes 
Farrar, " Christian exegesis resembled that of the Rabbinic 
school of Tiberias in its age of decadence. Both had their 
oral tradition with which they made the Word of God of 
none effect. The Fathers took the same position as the 
Mishna, and allegory as the Qabbala." 2 

' ' The Bible was turned into an amulet or fetich with 
which the hierarchy, which arrogantly usurped the name of 
' the Church,' could do as they liked. ' ' 3 

A few citations from the Patristic and Scholastic periods 
will suffice. When Abraham circumcised his 318 servants 
he had Christ in mind, according to Barnabas, for the num- 
ber may be represented by the letters T I H, of which T 
stands for the Cross, and I H for IHsous (Jesus). 4 " The 
land flowing with milk and honey," he interprets, "in ac- 
cordance with true gnosis ' ' to mean ' * Trust in Jesus. ' ' ' 'The 
land ' ' stands for « < man ; ' ' " milk ' ' for ' * the word ; ' ' and 
< < honey ' ' f or ' 'faith. ' ' 5 . . .Of Justin Martyr, Middleton 
says rather significantly, "he applied all the sticks and 
pieces of wood in the Old Testament, to the Cross." 6 . . . 
Jacob and Noah he regarded as types of Christ and numer- 
ous passages throughout the Old Testament pointed for 
him to the Saviour and proved His divinity. In this he 
was followed by very many of the later Fathers. The bib- 
lical story of Rebecca's coming to the well and meeting 
Abraham's servant is, according to Origen, a hidden way of 
reminding us that we must daily come to the wells of Scrip- 
ture in order to meet with Christ. 7 . . . The phrase " the 
Lord opened the eyes of Agar ' ' is but an allegorical method 

1 Ibid., p. 178. 5 Ibid., p. 170. 

2 Ibid., p. 215. 6 Ibid., p. 173. 
8 Ibid., p. 283. 7 Ibid., p. 199. 
4 Ibid., p. 168. 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 171 

of alluding to the blindness of the Jewish Synagogue. 1 . . . 
The Ark was coated within and without with pitch in order 
to show, according to St. Augustine, the safety of the 
Church from inward and outward heresies. . . . The 
drunkenness of Noah is * ' a figure of the death and passion 
of Christ. " 2 . . . When the Psalmist said, " I laid me 
down and slept, and rose up again," he had allusion, St. 
Augustine tells us, to the Death and Resurrection of Christ. 3 
. Albertus Magnus busied himself discovering reasons 
why it was necessary for an angel to announce to Mary the 
immaculate conception, and not for God to be His own mes- 
senger. 4 " Let not the foot of pride come against me. " 
Why " foot " and not " feet?" asked Albertus. Because, 
he says, " he who walks on one foot falls more easily than 
he who walks on two." 5 . . . "The mountains shall 
drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk." 
The mountains, he says, means the heights of the Three 
Persons in the Holy Trinity, or even the heights of the 
Apostles ; and the hills, that is the heights of the angels and 
saints, shall flow with the truth of the white sweet doctrine 
of the Humanity of Christ. 6 . . . Thomas Aquinas 's method 
of explaining a passage was to hunt through the Scripture 
for passages containing the same prominent word as the one 
he wishes to explain. Thus when " washing" is spoken of 
* * he collects the texts and says we are washed by water of 
baptism (Acts 22 : 16) ; by tears of contrition (Luke 7 : 38) ; 
by the wine of Divine love (Gen. 49 : 11) ; by the milk of 
the Divine word (Cant. 5 : 12) ; with the blood of the Pas- 
sion (1 Cor. 6 : 11) ; and with a view to our correction (John 
13 : 5. . . . Again " There shall come forth a rod out 
of the stem of Jesse. " The Blessed Virgin, he says, is " a 
rod. " (1) As consoling in tribulation, which he illustrates 
by the rod of Moses dividing the Red Sea. (2) As fructi- 
fying, because Aaron 's rod budded. (3) As satiating, be- 
cause the rod of Moses drew water from the rock. (4) As 
scourging, because a rod was to smite the corners of Moab. 
(5) As watching, because in Jer. 1 : 11, we read in the Vul- 
gate Virgam vigilantem ego video. 7 . . . Surely, this is 
symbolism gone mad. Bonaventura expatiates on the length, 

1 Ibid., p. 199. 6 Ibid., p. 267. 

2 Ibid., p. 238. 6 Ibid., p. 268. 

3 Ibid., p. 238. 7 Ibid., p. 287-288. 

4 Ibid., p. 267. 



172 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

breadth, height and width of Scripture ; he says, that its 
altitude is unattainable because of its inviolable authority, 
its plenitude inexhaustible because of its inscrutable pro- 
fundity, its certitude infallible because of its irrefutable 
progress, its value inappreciable because of its inestimable 
fruit, its pulchritude incontaminable because of its imper- 
mixtible purity, and so forth with all the inexhaustible ver- 
bosity of scholastic eloquence, and with an artificiality which 
lacks the ring of genuine feeling. 1 

From the above it will be seen how just is the remark of 
Farrar, when he says, " Spinning out of their own subjec- 
tivity by the aid of objections, solutions, definitions, con- 
clusions, corollaries, propositions, proofs, replies, reasons, 
refutations, exceptions, and distinctions, they weave, as 
Bacon said, interminable webs, " marvellous for the tenacity 
of the thread and workmanship, but for any useful purpose 
trivial and inane. . . . Langenstein in four large folios 
had only got to the fourth chapter of Genesis, and more 
real elucidation of the meaning could probably be given in 
four lines. Hasselbach wrote twenty-four books on the 
first chapter of Isaiah, and an indefinitely truer conception 
of its meaning could be furnished in two pages. 2 

These trivial and useless labors, not directly harmful in 
themselves, perhaps, are for the religious pathologist, posi- 
tive prognostic symptoms of the decadence and corruption 
of religion and morals. It could have been justly said in 
the period preceding the Reformation that no religion had 
ever sunk so low, because none had ever risen so high as 
did Christianity. The literature of the time, atheistic, prot- 
estant, and even Catholic is full of strong denunciations of 
the immorality, hypocrisy, and charlatanry of the Popes, 
the terrible degeneration of the Church, and the baneful in- 
fluence of both on the lives of the people. 3 

But Christianity was not doomed to die an ignoble death. 
The glowing sparks were seized from the smouldering ruins 
by the Waldenses, John Hus, John Wessel, Wyclif , Luther, 
Erasmus, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, and kindred spirits, 
and made to kindle new fires, which warmed and revived 
the almost frozen body of Christianity. Very soon, how- 
ever, these fires began to burn low and were nearly extin- 
guished in the period which was variously and significantly 

1 Ibid., p. 273. 2 Ibid., p. 289. 8 Ibid. } pp. 307-311. 



Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation. 173 

designated as the age of " Symbolatry, " of "creed bond- 
age, " of "Lutheran patristics," of "Protestant scholasti- 
cism, ' ' of Dogmatic traditionalism, ' ' of " death orthodoxy, ' ' 
of "theorizing system" of " ecclesiastico-confessional, ' ' of 
" polemico-dogmatic interpretation." 1 

Once more the fires were rekindled by religious leaders 
in England, Germany, and France, and since then they have 
been burning with less heat, perhaps, but certainly shed- 
ding more light on the path along which humanity is slowly 
trudging toward the distant goal. In religion as in govern- 
ment, "experience hath shown," to conclude with the im- 
mortal words of our Declaration of Independence, "that 
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are suffer- 
able, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to 
which they are accustomed. But when a long train of 
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object 
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, 
it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Govern- 
ment, and to provide new Guards for their future security." 

Christianity was a religious Declaration of Independence 
against Jewish sacerdotalism and formalism, Protestantism 
was another such Declaration against Catholic sacerdotalism 
and formalism, and since then there has happily been a 
gradual, healthy evolution which is full of promise for the 
future. 

1 Ibid., p. 360. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Intellectual Element in Religion. 

In the preceding chapters, while treating primarily of the 
emotions, it was impossible to entirely eliminate the intel- 
lectual element. Indeed, looked at from a different point 
of view, much that was there written might with almost 
equal propriety be included in this chapter. The emotional 
life is so wrapped up with the intellectual and volitional that 
it is only by artificial abstraction and a schematism that is 
too often misleading, that we can separate them. 

In the discussion of the definitions of religion it was 
pointed out that the emotions alone could not entirely ac- 
count for religion. The animal or human mother loving 
her offspring, for example, the husband his wife, the youth 
his mistress, the child feeling its dependence upon its pa- 
rents, fearing the dark, pitying a sick or wounded animal, 
amazed and bewildered at the conjuror's tricks, etc., are no 
more religious in the strict sense of the term than are the 
philanthropists and moralists who labor in the interest of 
their unfortunate fellow beings, or the church-goers who 
conform outwardly to all the forms aud ceremonies, but who 
are inwardly dead or indifferent to religion. ''But Israel," 
said Paul, "which followed after the law of righteousness 
hath not attained to the law of righteousness . 
because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the 
works of the law." And Luther, in anger, pronounced the 
writings of St. James an "epistle of straw " because the latter 
considered good works more valuable than mere faith. 

Again, reason and its products, — theology, creeds, and 
dogmas — do not constitute the whole of religion. Religion 
may be, and often is reasonable, but it does not therefore 
follow that reason is religion or even the beginning of reli- 
gion. Reason is one and only one of the many streams 
which feed the great ocean ; it is not the ocean itself. 

The mathematician who has succeeded in solving a diffi- 
cult problem, the philosopher who has struggled with the 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 175 

great Mystery and attained a Weltanschauung, the scientist 
who labors patiently in his laboratory in the pursuit of truth, 
are, as pure and simple mathematicians, philosophers, or 
scientists, not religious. There is, of course, a sense in 
which no one is more religious than the enthusiastic seeker 
after truth, but such a one is no longer a mere thinking ma- 
chine but a human being with a will and feelings, interests 
and ideals, as well as a logical mind. It is still a mooted 
question whether Buddhism should be called a religion or a 
philosophy. The enthusiastic Buddhist is undoubtedly reli- 
gious, the lukewarm or indifferent one is more philosopher 
than religionist. Mr. Benjamin Kidd even goes so far as 
to say that, ' ' a rational religion is a scientific impossibility, 
representing from the nature of the case, an inherent con- 
tradiction of terms. 1 This, however, is an extreme and un- 
tenable view due, perhaps, to Mr. Kidd's narrow conception 
of religion. We believe, on the contrary, that the religion 
of the future will be rational and even scientific ; science 
itself will become religious, and a mere collection and enu- 
meration of dry facts will be but a means to a higher reli- 
gious end. The old slogan " Science for science sake " is now 
rapidly becoming absurd, and in its stead the loftier ideal, 
science for a fuller and better life's sake, is being gradually 
substituted. That a new dispensation is not far distant 
there can be but little doubt. 2 

Returning to religion we repeat that it is a well-balanced, 
psycho-physical reaction in which all the soul elements par- 
ticipate. The emotions stimulate the intellect and give the 
will work to do, and these in their turn regulate the emo- 
tions and keep them within their proper bounds. Like the 
wheels of a clock, each in performing its own task helps the 
others to do the same. 

This brings us to the question, What is the intellect's role 
in religion? or in other words, What are the functions of 
knowledge and belief? But before we can answer this ques- 
tion we must first know what belief is. Belief may be 
tentatively defined as the voluntary acceptance of, or acqui- 
escence in, a statement or theory without having or demand- 
ing sufficient proof of its verity ; or, as the Apostle defined 
it, it is « i the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 

1 Social Evolution. 

2 See Pres. G. Stanley Hall, Science, Oct. 14, 1904; also his new 
Journal of Religious Psych, and Education, Vol. 1, No. 1. 



176 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

things not seen." We know, for instance, that two and two 
are the same as four, that things equal to the same thing are 
equal to each other, and other mathematical axioms, but we 
do not know with equal certainty that the nebular hypothesis 
or the atomic theory is true ; that there is such a substance 
as ether ; or, as Kant showed in the Critique of Pure Reason, 
that there is an external world, that we possess a soul, or 
that there is a God. We can only believe these assertions 
to be true ; we cannot know or prove them to be true. 
There is, however, sufficient evidence to warrant our holding 
these beliefs as such until they are proven to be erroneous. 
The nebular hypothesis and the atomic and ether theories 
harmonize well with our present knowledge of the universe 
and its laws, and the belief in a soul and a God is, for the 
most of us, at least, a psychical necessity. The Practical 
Reason must postulate them in order to function normally, 
because so many of our hopes and so much of our lives are 
built upon them. We could not live happily without them. 
Our passional nature wills to believe these postulates, and the 
intellect is powerless to prevent us. 

Normal belief, however, must be in harmony with the 
other beliefs which the individual and his clan or race enter- 
tain. That is, it must have some semblance of truth as they 
understand it, or as Prof. James would say, the hypotheses 
must be live ones. For a scientist to believe in evolution 
six days in the week, and in the early chapters of Genesis 
on the seventh, is as irrational as it would be for a Jew or 
Mohammedan to deny and profess Christianity for similar 
periods of time. One group of beliefs must not contradict 
or do violence to another group, otherwise there will be 
mental instability and confusion issuing into anarchic con- 
flicts and disorders which mean insanity. Religious beliefs 
must be consistent and congruous with the other beliefs the 
individual entertains. 

Again, for an adult living in a modern civilized commu- 
nity to believe that the earth is flat, four cornered, and sta- 
tionary, when he who runs may read the truth, is as abnormal, 
if not more so, as it would have been for one living in the 
days before Copernicus to believe the reverse. The ques- 
tion now naturally arises, What shall we say of Copernicus 
himself ? Was he abnormal ? Most certainly he was in the 
eyes of his contemporaries, and if we take them as a stand- 
ard, as we should, we must render the same verdict. We 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 177 

now know that he was far in advance of his time, and there- 
fore prefer to regard him as supernormal — a genius ; but the 
generation which gave him birth could not judge him other 
than they did. The human mind is fallible, of course, and 
ever growing ; what is considered abnormal to-day may b 
considered perfectly normal a century or a decade hence, 
and many of our present day < cranks ' and « faddists ' may 
occupy prominent niches in some future hall of fame. But 
this knowledge of our fallibility does not deter us from form- 
ing opinions to-day. And our opinions are true ones for 
the time being, for truth itself is dynamic not static, a 
growth subject to the laws of evolution. 1 

It will be seen that we consider normal what was consid- 
ered such by the race and age which gave it birth, so long 
as their beliefs did not lead to practices detrimental to the 
physical and psychical health of the people who entertained 
them. It is unfair and unscientific to arbitrarily assume any 
age or religion as a standard by which to measure all other 
ages and religions. Noah, it is said, was a just man and 
perfect in his generation, and therefore he found grace in 
the eyes of the Lord. The same Noah to-day would cer- 
tainly be considered far from perfect, and might be impris- 
oned for some of his deeds, but it would be unjust to judge 
him according to our present standards. Unfortunately this 
patent fact has too often been overlooked by Christian 
writers, and consequently their painstaking and scholarly 
works have but little scientific value. They seem to blame 
the ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Chinese, and 
others because they were not Christians ; are unable to enter 
into sympathetic rapport with their views and practices, and 
therefore fail to properly evaluate the productions of these 
ancient, non-Christian peoples. 

We have already indirectly shown how a pathological 
condition of the emotions influences the intellect and the will 
and is instrumental in bringing about pathological beliefs 
and practices. There remains to be treated here another 
class of beliefs which we may consider pathological, namely, 
the religious beliefs of early medieval, and we might almost 
add, modern Christendom concerning disease. 

These beliefs and practices obtained among all primitive 

1 See a good essay on Reason in Religion by C. C. Everett in his Es- 
says, Theological and Literary, pp. 1-29, and Schiller's chapter on Truth 
in his New Humanism. 

12 



178 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

and ancient peoples, but with them we cannot consider it 
pathological. The early mind of man which saw wonders 
and miracles in everything and knew not the meaning of 
law, necessarily regarded disease as one of the great myster- 
ies, as the hidden work of some malignant demon or an 
angry God. In other words, it was the product of unknown 
and supernatural causes. Now it would be absurd to ex- 
pect them, holding the views they did, which were natural 
and normal to their stage of development, to look for nat- 
ural remedies for their diseases. Since diseases came from 
gods or demons, only they could remove them. Hence, 
the direct appeals to them through prayer, penitence, and 
sacrifices, and the indirect appeals through those, who on 
account of their holiness or superior knowledge or psychical 
peculiarities were more likely to succeed in their interces- 
sions for the sufferers. The first physicians were, as is well 
known, priests and shamans, and they have continued such 
until quite recent times. Now this was as it should have 
been in primitive and ancient times ; but when we meet 
with it in early and late Christianity, many centuries after 
the immortal Hippocrates had by his wonderful researches 
laid a broad and deep scientific foundation for the develop- 
ment of medical science, upon which the School of Alexan- 
dria, especially such men as Herophilus and Erasistratus, 
built additional storeys, we must consider it arrested devel- 
opment and pathological. 

The following excerpts from the second volume of An- 
drew D. White's ''History of the warfare of Science with 
Theology" will be interesting in this connection. "The 
Gnostic and Manichaean struggles," writes this author, "had 
ripened the theologic idea that, although at times diseases 
are punishments by the Almighty, the main agency in them 
is Satanic. The great fathers and renowned leaders of the 
early church accepted and strengthened this idea. Origen 
said: "It is demons which produce famine, unfruitfulness, 
corruptions of the air, pestilences ; they hover concealed in 
clouds in the lower atmosphere, and are attracted by the 
blood and incense which the heathen offer to them as gods." 
St. Augustine said: "All diseases of Christians are to be 
ascribed to these demons ; chiefly do they torment fresh- 
baptized Christians, yea, even the guiltless, new born in- 
fants." Tertullian insisted that a malevolent angel is in 
constant attendance upon every person. Gregory of Nazi- 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 179 

anzus declared that bodily pains are provoked by demons, 
and that medicines are useless, but that they are often cured 
by the laying on of consecrated hands. St. Mlus and St. 
Gregory of Tours, echoing St. Ambrose (who declared that 
"the precepts of medicine are contrary to celestial science, 
watching and prayer ") , gave examples to show the sinful- 
ness of resorting to medicine instead of trusting to the in- 
tercession of the Saints. St. Bernard, in a letter to certain 
monks, warned them that to seek relief from disease in 
medicine was in harmony neither with their religion nor 
with the honor and purity of their order. This view even 
found its way into the canon law, which declared the pre- 
cepts of medicine contrary to Divine Knowledge. As a 
rule, the leaders of the Church discouraged the theory that 
diseases are due to natural causes, and most of them depre- 
cated a resort to surgeons and physicians rather than to 
supernatural means." 1 

But what were these non-medical, supernatural means? 
Prayers and self mortifications, answered the Church, and 
especially sacred relics from which she derived enormous 
revenues. "Every cathedral, every great abbey, and nearly 
every parish church claimed possession of healing relics." 

In such environments it can readily be seen that there was 
no room for physicians nor any possibility for the develop- 
ment of medical science. " It would be expecting too much 
from human nature to imagine that pontiffs who derived 
large revenues from the sale of the Agnus Dei, or priests 
who derived both wealth and honors from cures wrought at 
shrines under their care, or lay dignitaries who had invested 
heavily in relics, should favor the development of any 
science which undermined their interests." 2 

Even when the supposed relics of sacred Saints were 
proved to be fraudulent, the belief of the masses in them 
was not lessened. "When Prof. Buckland, the eminent 
osteologist and geologist, discovered that the relics of St. 
Rosalia at Palermo, which had for ages cured diseases and 
warded off epidemics, were the bones of a goat, this fact 
caused not the slightest diminution in their miraculous 
power." 

' ' Naturally the belief thus sanctioned by successive heads 
of the Church, infallible in all teachings regarding faith and 

1 Loc. cit., pp. 27-28. 2 Ibid., p. 30. 



180 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

morals, created a demand for amulets and charms of all 
kinds ; and under this influence we find a reversion to old 
pagan fetiches. Nothing, on the whole, stood more con- 
stantly in the way of any proper development of medical 
science than these fetich cures, whose efficacy was based on 
theological reasoning and sanctioned by ecclesiastical pol- 
icy." 1 Another almost impassable barrier raised by the 
Church to balk the efforts of struggling science was the old 
feeling, inherited from the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans 
against dissections. The Church, which laid so much em- 
phasis and looked with so much favor on the ascetic attitude 
which regarded the body as a vile, filthy prison to be weak- 
ened or broken in order to free the soul, now that her in- 
terest was to defeat science proclaimed the human body to 
be the beautiful temple of the Holy Spirit to mutilate or 
destroy which was the greatest sacrilege. This was further 
reinforced by the teaching in the Apostles' Creed concerning 
the resurrection of the body. The most ironical excuse 
offered for her stand against dissection was ' ' the Church 
abhors the shedding of blood." This, by the Church which 
gave to the blood-thirsty inquisitor Alva a jewelled sword 
with the inscription, Accipe sanctum gladium, munus a Deo, 
and which for centuries and centuries caused human blood 
to flow in torrents ! The result of these teachings was that 
for more than a thousand years surgery was considered dis- 
honorable : "the greatest monarch s were often unable to 
secure a surgical operation ; and it was only in 1406 that a 
better beginning was made, when the Emperor Wenzel, of 
Germany, ordered that dishonor should no longer attach to 
the surgical profession." 2 

"St. Bernard declared that monks who took medicine 
were guilty of conduct unbecoming to religion. Even the 
School of Salerno was held in aversion by multitudes of 
strict churchmen, since it prescribed rules for diet, thereby 
indicating a belief that diseases arise from natural causes 
and not from the malice of the devil ; moreover, in the 
medical schools Hippocrates was studied, and he had es- 
pecially declared that demoniacal possession is " nowise 
more divine, nowise more infernal, than any other disease." 
Hence it was, doubtless, that the Lateran Council, about 
the beginning of the thirteenth century, forbade physicians, 

*Loc. cit., Vol. 2, p. 30. *Loc. cit., Vol. 2, p. 32. 



The 1 Intellectual Element in Religion. 181 

under pain of exclusion from the Church, to undertake 
medical treatment without calling in ecclesiastical advice." 1 
Two hundred and fifty years later Pope Pius V not only or- 
dered that "all physicians before administering treatment 
should call in ' a physician of the soul, ' " on the ground, " 
as he declares, that "bodily infirmity frequently arises from 
sin, ' ' but he ordered that, if at the end of the three days the 
patient had not made confession to a priest, the medical man 
should cease his treatment, under pain of being deprived of 
his right to practice, and of expulsion from the faculty if he 
were a professor, and that every physician and professor of 
medicine should make oath that he was strictly fulfilling 
these conditions. ' ' 2 

The masses were also prejudiced against physicians and 
scientists in general because the Church classes them with 
sorcerers, magicians, and atheists. It will be remembered 
that Roger Bacon was imprisoned for a number of years, and 
barely escaped execution, because he was believed to be a 
magician. 

Meanwhile, in order to more successfully combat the ad- 
vances which medicine was slowly making in spite of the 
many obstacles thrown in its way, the Church developed a 
medical science of its own. To this effort we owe such doc- 
trines as ' ' the increase and decrease of the brain with the 
phases of the moon, the ebb and flow of human vitality with 
the tides of the ocean, the use of the lungs to fan the heart, 
the function of the liver as the seat of love, and that of the 
spleen as the centre of wit. ' ' Also the doctrine of signatures, 
according to which it is held that God has marked the things 
which will cure disease. Thus bloodroot, on account of its 
red juice, is good for the blood ; liverwort, having a leaf like 
the liver, cures diseases of the liver ; eyebright, being marked 
with a spot like an eye, cures diseases of the eyes ; celan- 
dine, having a yellow juice, cures jaundice ; bugloss, resem- 
bling a snake ; s head, cures snakebite ; red flannel, looking 
like blood, cures blood taints, and therefore rheumatism ; 
bear's grease, being taken from an animal thickly covered 
with hair, is recommended to persons fearing baldness. 3 

' c Still another method evolved by this theological pseudo- 
science was that of disgusting the demon with the body 
which he tormented ; hence the patient was made to swallow 

1 Loc. cit., p. 37. 2 Loc. cit., p. 37. s Loc. cit., pp. 38-39. 



182 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

or apply to himself various unspeakable ordures, with such 
medicines as the livers of toads, the blood of frogs and rats, 
fibres of the hangman's rope, and ointment made from the 
body of gibbeted criminals. Many of these were survivals 
of heathen superstitions, but theologic reasoning wrought 
into them an orthodox significance. As an example of this 
mixture of heathen with Christian magic, we may cite the 
following from a mediaeval medical book as a salve against 
1 nocturnal goblin visitors ' : i Take hop plant, wormwood, 
bishopwort, lupine, ashthroat, henbane, harewort, viper's 
bugloss, heathberry plant, cropleek, garlic, grains of hedge- 
rife, githrife, and fennel. Put these worts into a vessel, set 
them under the altar, sing over them the nine masses, boil 
them in butter and sheep 's grease, add much holy salt, strain 
through a cloth, throw the worts into running water. If any 
ill-tempting occur to a man, or an elf or goblin night visitors 
come, smear his body with this salve, and put it on his eyes, 
and cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with 
the sign of the cross. His condition will soon be better. ' ' ' l 
In surgery, which was until the fifteenth century a despised 
profession practiced largely by charlatans, "the application 
of various ordures relieved fractures ; the touch of the hang- 
man cured sprains ; the breath of a donkey expelled poison ; 
friction with a dead man's tooth cured toothache." Of the 
innumerable miracle and fetich cures we have already spoken 
in another connection. 2 

" Even such serious matters as fractures, calculi, and diffi- 
cult parturition, in which modern science has achieved some 
of its greatest triumphs, were then (Middle Ages) dealt with 
by relics ; and to this hour the ex votos hanging at such 
shrines as those of St. Genevieve at Paris, of St. Antony at 
Padua, of the Druid image at Chartres, of the Virgin at 
Einsiedeln and Lourdes, of the fountain at La Salette, are 
survivals of this same conception of disease and its cure. 
So, too, with a multitude of sacred pools, streams, and spots 
of earth. In Ireland, hardly a parish has not had one such 
sacred centre; in England and Scotland there have been 
many; and as late as 1805 the eminent Dr. Milner, of the 
Roman Catholic Church, gave a careful and earnest account 
of a miraculous cure wrought at a sacred well in Flintshire. 
In all parts of Europe the pious resort to wells and springs 

*Loc. cit., p. 39. ' 2 See pp. 132-134 of this book. 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 183 

continued long after the close of the Middle Ages, and has 
not entirely ceased to-day. ' ' 1 These cures have their proto- 
types in the Old and New Testament, and the priests argued 
convincingly, « ' If the Almighty saw fit to raise the dead 
man who touched the bones of Elisha, why should he not re- 
store to life the patient who touches at Cologne the bones of 
the Wise Men of the East who followed the star of Nativity ? 
If Naaman was cured by dipping himself in the waters of the 
Jordan, and so many others by going down into the Pool of 
Siloam, why should not men still be cured by bathing in pools 
which men equally holy with Elisha have consecrated? If 
one sick man was restored by touching the garments of St. 
Paul, why should not another sick man be restored by touch- 
ing the seamless coat of Christ at Treves, or the winding sheet 
of Christ at Besancon ? And out of all these inquiries came in- 
evitably that question whose logical answer was especially 
injurious to the development of medical science: Why should 
men seek to build up scientific medicine and surgery, when 
relics, pilgrimages and sacred observances, according to one 
overwhelming mass of concurrent testimony, have cured and 
are curing hosts of sick folk in all parts of Europe?" 2 

Another factor which told against the development of 
medical science was the strong Judophobia prevalent in the 
Middle Ages and even later. The Jews were beyond a doubt 
the best physicians ; they studied medicine together with the 
Arabians in the Dark Ages, brought it into Europe, and 
were, at this time, the recognized leaders in the profession, 
but to allow men ' « who openly rejected the means of salva- 
tion, and whose souls were undeniably lost" to heal them 
would be to insult Providence. ' « Preaching friars denounced 
them from the pulpit, and the rulers in State and Church, 
while frequently secretly consulting them, openly proscribed 
them. 3 . . . "Gregory of Tours tells us of an arch-deacon 
who, having been partially cured of disease of the eyes by 
St. Martin sought further aid from a Jewish physician, with 
the result that neither the saint nor the Jew could help him 
afterward. Popes Eugene IV, Nicholas V, and Calixtus 
III, especially forbade Christians to employ them. The 
Trullanean Council in the eighth century, the Councils of 
Beziers and Alby in the thirteenth ; the Councils of Avignon 
and Salamanca in the fourteenth ; the Synod of Bramberg 

Hbid., p. 42. Hbid., p. 43. 3 Ibid., p. 44. 



184 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

and the Bishop of Passau in the fifteenth ; the Council of 
Avignon in the sixteenth, with many others expressly forbade 
the faithful to call Jewish physicians or surgeons ; such great 
preachers as John Greiler and as John Herolt thundered from 
the pulpit against them and all who consulted them. As late 
as the middle of the seventeenth century, when the City Coun- 
cil of Hall, in Wurtenberg gave some privileges to a Jewish 
physician on account of his admirable experience and skill, 
' ' the clergy of the city joined in a protest, declaring that 
* it were better to die with Christ than to be cured by a Jew 
doctor aided by the devil. ' Still in their extremity, bishops, 
cardinals, kings, and even popes, insisted on calling in phy- 
sicians of the hated race. ' ' * 

In this field, as in Symbolism and Bibliolatry, the Reforma- 
tion, especially in its earlier days, effected no marked im- 
provement. Luther himself ascribed his diseases to " devils' 
spells, ' ' declared that "Satan produces maladies which afflict 
mankind, for he is the prince of death," that "he poisons 
the air, ' ? and that • ' no malady comes from God. ' ' 2 Protest- 
ant ministers in general following Catholic priests cited numer- 
ous passages in the Gospels in support of this sacred theory. 
Chief among these passages is the fifth chapter of St. James : 

" Is any among you sick? let him call for the elders of the 
Church ; and let them pray over him, annointing him with 
oil in the name of the Lord ; and the prayer of faith shall 
save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up. ' ' 3 

The Waldeneses, Albigenses and Moravians of the Middle 
Ages strongly believed in the beneficent effects of prayer, 
and among the Huguenots we find miraculous gifts of healing 
and spiritual prophesy. Likewise among the 'Friends' or 
Quakers of England these gifts obtained, and their leader, 
Geo. Fox, is said to have wrought many cures. In his jour- 
nal we read that he wrought many miracles by the power of 
God ; that he made the lame whole and restored the diseased, 
that he spoke to a sick man in Maryland and raised him up 
by the Lord's power. 

Wesley firmly believed in Divine intervention in human 
affairs, and his journals teem with ghost-stories, second-sight 
phenomena, and miracles that had taken place among his 
disciples. 4 

1 Ibid., p. 44. 2 Ibid., p. 45. 

3 See Feilding: Faith-Healing and ' Christian Science/ p. 29. 

4 See Feilding: loc. cit., p. 31. 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 185 

Even in our own day many Catholics in France and Ger- 
many make pilgrimages to certain famous shrines such as the 
Pyrenean Lourdes, the Grottoes of Brive, Rocanadour, Le 
Puy, Treves, and Kevalaer in the hope of being cured. 1 

The most popular of all theological cures was the royal 
touch for diseases, particularly epilepsy and scrofula, the lat- 
ter being known as the king's evil. 

' ' This mode of cure began, so far as history throws light 
upon it, with Edward the Confessor in the eleventh century, 
and came down from reign to reign, passing from the Catho- 
lic saint to Protestant debauchers upon the English throne, 
with ever increasing miraculous efficacy. ' ' 2 

There is an over-abundance of supposed evidence, both 
medical and theological, to prove that these cures were effec- 
tive. Charles II, " the most thoroughly cynical debauchee 
who ever sat on the English throne before the advent of 
George IV, ' ' touched nearly one hundred thousand persons 
in the twenty-five years of his kingship, and Louis XIY, on 
a certain Easter Sunday touched about sixteen hundred at 
Versailles. The touch of a seventh son and especially of a 
seventh son of a seventh son was also believed to have great 
curative power. 

In modern times the science of medicine has had to with- 
stand a bitter warfare waged against it by theology on 
account of its discovery and practice of inoculation, vaccina- 
tion, and use of anaesthetics. 

When Boyer, a little more than a century and a half ago, 
presented inoculation as a preventive of smallpox, sermons 
were immediately preached and pamphlets published against 
The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation? The prac- 
tice was denounced as " diabolical, " " flying in the face of 
Providence," and "endeavoring to baffle a Divine judg- 
ment. ' ' In our country it was held that smallpox is " a 
judgment of God on the sins of the people," and that " to 
avert it is but to provoke Him more ; ' ' that inoculation is 
4 ' an encroachment on the prerogatives of Jehovah, whose 
right it is to wound and smite. ' ' The words of Hosea : 
' ' He hath torn, and he will heal us ; he hath smitten, and 
he will bind us up, ' ' were used as an irrefutable argument 
against the practice. 

*See Feilding: loc. cit, pp. 22-23. 
2 Ibid., p. 46. 

3 This was the title of a published sermon by Rev. Edward Massey, 
1772. 



186 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

The same arguments were used against vaccination. " In 
1798 an An ti- vaccination Society was formed by physicians 
and clergymen, who called on the people of Boston to sup- 
press vaccination, as bidding defiance to Heaven itself, even 
to the will of God ; and declared that ' ' the law of God pro- 
hibits the practice." 1 

As late as L885, when small-pox broke out with great viru- 
lence in Montreal, the Catholic inhabitants of the city refused 
to be vaccinated, and as a consequence large numbers of them 
succumbed to the disease. When an effort was made by the 
authorities to enforce compulsory vaccination 4 ' large num- 
bers of the Catholic working population resisted and even 
threatened bloodshed. . . . The Abbe Filiatrault, priest of 
St. James 's Church declared in a sermon that, ' « if we are 
afflicted with smallpox, it is because we had a carnival last 
winter, feasting the flesh which has offended the Lord ; . . . 
it is to punish our pride that God has sent us smallpox. ' ' 
The clerical press went so far as to exhort its readers to re- 
sort to arms rather than to submit to vaccination. Finally, 
however, the laws were enforced and the plague stayed. 
Similar charges were brought against the use of cocaine, 
quinine, chloroform and anesthetics in general. Each drug 
has its own sad story of severe struggle for survival, and in 
each case the bitterest foe was theology, Likewise the oft 
recurrent plagues and pestilences which swept away count- 
less millions of human beings all over Europe, threatening at 
times the annihilation of whole nations, were regarded as ex- 
pressions of Divine wrath or Satanic malice, instead of the 
results of unhygienic and extremely filthy modes of living, 
which of course, they really were, and upon which the 
Roman Church looked with a great deal of favor. They en- 
deavored, therefore, to stay the plagues not by sanitary 
measures, but by prayers, fastings, flagellations, sacrifices, 
penitential processions, and the like. At times they went so 
far as to offer sacrifices to the ancient Roman gods, whom 
they considered devils, in the hope of propitiating them. 

Because the Jews, on account of their strict observance of 
hygiene and sanitary laws suffered much less than the Chris- 
tians, they were regarded by the latter as emissaries in the 
employ of Satan, hence their mysterious immunity. "As 
a result of this mode of thought, attempts were made in all 

^eilding: loc. cit., p. 58. % 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 187 

parts of Europe to propitiate the Almighty, to thwart Satan, 
and to stop the plague by torturing and murdering the Jews. 
Through Europe during great pestilences we hear of exten- 
sive burnings of this devoted people. In Bavaria, at the 
time of the Black Death, it is computed that twelve thousand 
Jews thus perished ; in the small town of Erfurt the number 
is said to have been three thousand ; in Strassburg, the Rue 
Brulee remains a monument to the two thousand Jews burned 
there for poisoning the wells and causing the plague of 1348 ; 
at the royal castle of Chinon, near Tours, an immense trench 
was dug, filled with blazing wood, and in a single day one 
hundred and sixty Jews were burned.' ' These persecutions 
were prosecuted throughout Europe with such religious zeal 
that there is scarcely a foot of its soil that is not saturated 
with Jewish blood. But the Jews were not the only victims 
of this terrible delusion. There were also the so-called 
witches, whom the pious were from the earliest times com-' 
manded not to suffer to live. 

We need not here dwell on the history of witchcraft and 
the cruel and ingenious tortures to which the thousands upon 
thousands of innocent victims, especially aged women, were 
subjected. These records written in blood by the insane re- 
ligionists of all nations and ages are well known. 

Medicine was not the only branch of science that suffered 
from the bitter attacks of Theology. All the other branches, 
as Mr. White shows in his scholarly work, have had to pass 
through the theological baptism of fire and blood. The poet 
clearly understood the psychology of religious belief or faith 
when he wrote : 

" The alchemist may doubt the shining gold 

His crucible pours out, 
But faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast 

To some dear falsehood, 
Hugs it to the last.' 1 

But the last day of fanaticism must come sooner or later 
to every vigorous, progressive race, and when it comes 
" dear falsehood" gives place to its conqueror Divine Truth. 
To-day, if theological dogmas are at variance with the facts 
of science they must change and adapt themselves to the lat- 
ter or else be eliminated, and not the reverse, as was form- 
erly the case. In the intellectual realm as well as in the 
physical, the evolutionary law of * survival of the fittest' 
holds sway. 



188 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

There is, however, as we have pointed out before, in every 
progressive race an unprogressive element which cannot 
assimilate the new thought nor adapt itself to the new condi- 
tions, but which somehow manages to survive and perpetu- 
ate itself. From medieval times down to the present there 
have always been some to believe in these miracle cures and 
practice them. There stretches an almost unbroken chain 
from the Catholic saints and English kings to Mrs. Mary M. 
Baker Glover Patterson Eddy and her disciples. 

In 1662 a certain Irish- Protestant, Valentine Greatrakes 
was convinced that he possessed the gift of healing the 
King 's evil, and for a number of years devoted three days in 
every week to the exercise of his gift, which he looked upon 
as a gift of God. 

Concerning his works the Bishop of Dromore testified as 
follows from personal knowledge. "I have seen pains 
strangely fly before his hands till he had chased them out of 
the body; dimness cleared, and deafness cured by his touch. 
Twenty persons at several times, in fits of the falling sick- 
ness, were in two or three minutes brought to themselves. . . 
Running sores of the " King's evil" were dried up ; grievous 
sores of many months date in a few days healed, cancerous 
knots dissolved, ' ' etc. 1 Limiting himself at first to the cure 
of scrofula, he little by little extended his practice until 
finally he undertook to cure all diseases, and met with great 
success. 

In 1727, at Klosterle in Bohemia, a certain Roman Catholic 
priest, Joseph Gassner, began his faith-healing works and was 
so successful that tents had to be pitched for the accommoda- 
tion of the great crowds which flocked to him from Swabia, 
Tyrol, and even Switzerland. He continued his cures until 
the arrival of the famous Mesmer who attributed them to 
what he called ' animal magnetism ' and not to divine inter- 
vention. 2 

Another Roman Catholic faith-healer of the early nine- 
teenth century was Prince Alexander of Hohenlohe-Walden- 
burg-Schillingsfurst, Archbishop and Grand Provost of Gross- 
wardein, Hungary; Abbot of St. Michael's, and titular 
Bishop of Sardica. " The imposing names and titles of this 
aristocratic personage," writes Dr. Tuke, "probably had 

iFeilding: loc. cit., p. 41. 
2 Feilding: loc cit., pp. 43. 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 189 

much to do with his influence. ' ' : According to the testi- 
mony of the ex-King of Bavaria, who was himself partially 
cured of deafness by the princely healer, the latter by a few 
short prayers, and by invocation of the name of Jesus caused 
the deaf to hear, the blind to see, and the lame to walk. 
Among those cured were people of both sexes, all ages, and 
classes, " from the humblest to a prince of the blood.' ' 

Another eye-witness, Professor Onymus, of the University 
of Wiirzburg, tells us of a man of seventy who was cured in 
a few days, of paralysis of many years standing, also of a 
man of fifty with " arms and legs utterly paralyzed and face 
of a corpse-like pallor, " who on the prayer of the Prince 
4 'was instantly cured, rose to his feet and walked perfectly . " 
A student who " had lost for two years the use of his legs, ' ' 
and was perfectly cured, is another case cited by the Pro- 
fessor. 2 

Mention should be made here of the Mormon sect whose 
half- mystic, half-impostor founder, Joseph Smith, claimed 
the gift of healing as well as prophecy and interpretation of 
tongues, and the same claim was made by his successor, 
Brigham Young, and other Latter Day Saints. One of the 
articles of the Mormon faith reads : " We believe in the gift 
of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, interpre- 
tation of tongues," etc. Another queer sect, founded in 
1831 by Edward Irving and known as the ' Irvingites, ' 
claimed the possession of similar gifts. 

From the above it will be seen that that religious curi- 
osity egregiously misnamed Christian Science, which has 
grown with wonderful rapidity in recent years, is by no means 
a modern product, nor a Minerva-like creature of Mrs. Mary 
M. Baker Glover Patterson Eddy's brain, as she would have 
us infer from a passage on page one, of her Science and 
Health, with Key to the Scriptures. Neither was it an orig- 
inal discovery of 'Dr. ' P. P. Quimby, a famous healer who 
cured her of her chronic diseases and taught her his doc- 
trines, and who died in 1865, one year before his pupil an- 
nounced her ' discovery ' without acknowledging her indebt- 
nedness to him. 

Of Christian Science and its doctrines, which are familiar 
to all, little need be said here. There is no doubt that very 

lr The Influence of the Mind upon the Body, in Feilding, op. cit., p. 44. 
2 Feilding: op. cit., pp. 45.47. 



190 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

many cures have been wrought by its disciples, but all such 
cures may be explained as 'Dr.' Newton explained the cures 
of his pupil and rival 'Dr.' Bryant. When Dr. J. M. Buck- 
ley, speaking to Newton, mentioned Bryant, the former 
"instantly denounced (Bryant) as an unmitigated fraud, 
who had no genuine healing power. ' ' 

Dr. Buckley asked, « ' if Bryant be an unmitigated fraud, 
how do you account for his cures?" " Oh ! they are caused 
by the faith of the people," replied Newton, " and the con- 
centration of their minds upon his operations, with the ex- 
pectation of being cured. None would go to see Bryant 
unless they had some faith that he might cure them, and 
when he begins his operations with great positiveness of 
manner, and they see the crutches he has, and hear the peo- 
ple testify that they have been cured, it produces a tremen- 
dous influence upon them ; and then he gets them started in 
the way of exercising, and they do a great many things they 
thought they could not do ; their appetites and spirits revive, 
and if toning them up can possibly reduce the diseased ten- 
dency, many of them will get well. ' ' 

' ' Doctor, pardon me, ' ' said Dr. Buckley, ' ' is not that a 
correct account of the manner in which you perform your 
wonderful works?" "Oh no, " was the reply, "the dif- 
ference between a genuine healer and a quack like Bryant is 
as wide as the poles." * 

The great rock on which Eddyism and its allied cults, both 
ancient and modern, have grounded is Bibliolatry, and literal 
interpretation, with which we have already dealt. Every 
word of the Bible is interpreted literally, and often arbitrarily 
when there is need of harmonizing it with the ' Scientist's ' 
crude and peculiar metaphysics. Many Scriptural passages, 
when taken literally and isolated from their context have, 
if not directly caused such religious aberrations, at least re- 
inforced them, and rendered their struggle for survival much 
lighter. Thus Mrs. Eddy writes in her book, which is 
amazingly full of contradictions and absurd statements, that, 
"Man is not matter, made up of brains, blood, bones, and 
other material elements. The Scriptures inform us that man 
was made in the image and likeness of God. Matter is not 
that likeness. The reflection of Spirit cannot be so unlike 
Spirit. Man is spiritual and perfect. . . . Man is the 

1 A. Feilding: Faith Healing and Christian Science, pp. 68-59. 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 191 

idea of Divine Principle, not physique. He is the compound 
idea of God, including all right ideas. . . . Man is in- 
capable of sin, sickness and death, inasmuch as he derives 
his essence from God, and possesses not a single original, or 
underived power. Hence the real man cannot depart from 
holiness. Nor can God, by whom man was evolved, engender 
the capacity or freedom to sin. A mortal sinner is not God's 
man, for the offspring of God cannot be evil. Mortals are 
men's counterfeits. They are the children of the Wicked 
One, or the one evil, which declares that man begins as a 
material embryo. " 1 Again, "I have found nothing in an- 
cient or modern systems on which to found my own, except 
the teachings and demonstrations of our great Master, and 
the lives of the prophets and apostles. ' ' 2 

This severe literalism is further brought out vividly and 
amusingly in Mr. Hazzard's < Prayer for a Dyspeptic,' which 
also shows how large a role repetition and suggestion play in 
these cures. "Holy Reality! We Believe in Thee that 
Thou art Everywhere present. We really believe it. Blessed 
Reality, we do not pretend to believe, think we believe, be- 
lieve that we believe. We believe. Believing that Thou art 
everywhere present, we believe that Thou art in this patient's 
stomach, in every fibre, in every cell, in every atom, that 
Thou art the sole, only reality of that stomach. Heavenly, 
Holy Reality, we will try not to be such hypocrites and infi- 
dels, as every day of our lives to affirm our faith in Thee and 
then immediately begin to tell how sick we are, forgetting 
that Thou art everything and that Thou art not sick, and 
therefore that nothing in this universe was ever sick, is now 
sick, or can be sick. Forgive us our sins in that we have 
this day talked about our backaches, and that we have told 
our neighbors that our food hurts us, that we mentioned to 
a visitor that there was a lump in our stomach, that we have 
wasted our valuable time which should have been spent in 
thy service, in worrying for fear that our stomach would 
grow worse, in that we have disobeyed Thy blessed law in 
thinking that some kind of medicine would help us. We 
know, Father and Mother of us all, that there is no such 
thing as a really diseased stomach ; that the disease is the 
Carnal Mortal Mind given over to the World, the Flesh, and 

1 Science and Health, etc., pp. 471-2. Quoted by Feilding, op. cit., 
p. 76. 

2 Science and Health, p. 20. 



192 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

the Devil ; that the mortal mind is a twist, a distortion, a 
false attitude, the Harmatia of Thought. Shining and glori- 
ous Verity, we recognize the great and splendid Fact that the 
moment we really believe the Truth, Disease ceases to trouble 
us ; that the Truth is that there is no Disease in either real 
Body or Mind ; that in the Mind what seems to be a disease 
is a False Belief, a parasite, a hateful Excresence, and that 
what happens in the Body is the shadow of the Lie in the 
Soul . Lord, help us to believe that All Evil is Utterly Un- 
real ; that it is silly to be sick, absurd to be ailing, wicked 
to be wailing, atheism and denial of God to say, 'I am 
sick. ' Help us to stoutly affirm with our hand in your 
hand, with our eyes fixed on Thee, that we have no Dyspep- 
sia, that we never had Dyspepsia, that we will never have 
Dyspepsia, that there is no such thing, that there never was 
any such thing, that there never will be any such thing, 
Amen. " 1 

Is this religious pathology or mere quackery? It were 
certainly unphilosophical to make a sweeping statement; 
there are undoubtedly many sincere though deluded ' Scien- 
tists, ' but in the majority of cases we have no hesitancy in 
saying that there is a mixture of both religious pathology and 
quackery with the latter element predominating. Christian 
Science serves a useful purpose in bringing about some sort 
of mental stability in the minds of neurotic and hysterical in- 
dividuals, chiefly women, who could not by any other means 
be effectively cured. But when it unqualifiedly condemns 
all modern medical science and art it becomes a public dan- 
ger, and we cannot but approve the strenuous efforts of the 
medical faculty to have proper laws passed against it. 

In our scientific age Christian Science, Mormonism, Dowe- 
ism, Spiritualism, and the thousand and one other ' isms' are 
as much anomalies and aberrations, and as atavistic and de- 
generate as were the many strange beliefs and dogmas which 
we have briefly reviewed, in their own day. Just as we 
have seen there are in every age hyperconservative individ- 
uals who are the enemies of progress, because they cannot 
without difficulty adapt themselves to the new conditions, so, 
too, are there fickle, nervous, erratic individuals who seize 
greedily on anything novel, vague, and mysterious, and with 
a fervor which does more credit to their credulity than their 

1 Quoted by Feilding: op. cit., Appendix A. 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 193 

intellects, believe in doctrines because they are absurd, and 
in direct proportion to their absurdity. 

Doubt. 

" The true opposites of belief" writes James, " are doubt 
and inquiry." It has become almost an axiom that every 
belief not grounded on truth carries within itself the germs 
of its own destruction ; and these germs are doubts. If from 
the wreckage new and better beliefs leading to a better Welt- 
anschauung arise, then doubt has served a very useful pur- 
pose and was normal, but if, on the contrary, doubt merely 
destroys and leaves a barren waste, then its work has been 
most baneful and pathological, for any belief, however absurd 
it may be, is psychologically better than mere impotent doubt, 
just as any kind of life, even the most wretched, is biologically 
superior to death. Belief brings psycho-physical satisfaction, 
peace and stability; chronic doubt leads to intellectual un- 
rest and finally to insanity. Therefore, while doubt plays a 
most useful role in intellectual development, especially dur- 
ing adolescence ; while it spurs the intellect on to free itself 
from the errors of the past, and extend further and further 
the boundaries of knowledge, its usefulness ceases as soon as 
it becomes chronic and merely destructive. In the devel- 
opment of an organism there are always two forces at work, 
anabolism and katabolism, i. e., a healthy life and growth, but 
so soon as anabolism ceases entirely, or in part, we have 
rapid degeneration and decomposition ending in death. So 
when doubt fails to give birth to new beliefs, when the kat- 
abolic or destructive process in it is more active than the 
anabolic or constructive, there follows an intellectual degen- 
eration which ends in morbid despair, melancholia, and fre- 
quently in suicide. Healthy, legitimate doubt is the mother 
of investigation, investigation begets knowledge, and knowl- 
edge means progress. But not so with Pyrrhonistic or uni- 
versal skepticism. That bears no fruit whatever, not even 
ignorance. Indeed it is worse than sterile, it is a positive 
negative ; a poison, not an opiate. We can make the dis- 
tinction between normal and abnormal doubt clearer by illus- 
trations. 

1. Replying to a questionnaire sent out by Dr. Burn- 
ham a respondent writes : . . . < 4 This belief in a real truth 
lying somewhere intermediate between the adverse testimony 

13 



194 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

of different witnesses (to which he arrived after a period of 
doubting) saved me from a radical skepticism, and, of 
course, from anything like despair, and even from a ' storm 
and stress ' period. This kind of doubt was rather a con- 
stant and steady stimulus to inquiry. The result, therefore, 
was healthful, in that it incited me to study, and carried me 
through the iconoclastic period to the reconstructive one that 
followed. Nor do I think that I was ever led to any real 
pessimism. I never really doubted that God was good, or 
that the world was rational, but I had found that men had 
presumed to dogmatize on a great many subjects which they 
knew nothing about. I had therefore a kind of misanthropy, 
but even this form of pessimism tended to yield — as I learned 
to study men themselves and to see how many-sided is what 
each calls truth — to a vigorous hatred only of intolerance." 1 

Another writes: . . . " Everything was challenged, and 
everything almost seemed open to doubt ; but finally, I 
reached bed-rock in the following propositions : 

1 ' There is such a thing as truth, whether I can ever find it 
out or not — if the truth were known there would be a best way 
to live in view of the truth — the wise thing to do is to walk 
in the light of what truth is known, and constantly to strive 
for new truth. This was a solid foundation — on this I 
might build but little, but that little would stand. " 

A clergyman wrote to Dr. Starbuck, "I always hail doubt 
as sure to reveal some unexpected truth. As often as I have 
tried to dodge doubts I have suffered. My real doubts have 
always come upon me suddenly, and unaccountably, and 
have been the precursors of fresh discovery." 2 

The main features of one of the most extreme cases were 
somewhat as follows: "My correspondent," writes Dr. 
Burnham, "was educated in the religious environment of a 
Puritan family. As early as the age of fourteen, probably, 
his skeptical tendencies began. He felt that God was gone 
from the world. The emotional stress in his case was very 
great; he felt himself a sinner in having doubts, and yet 
found no escape. This condition lasted through his college 
course. Life seemed empty. The relativity of good and 
evil undermined the ethical standing ground. A few years 
of travel did not hinder the contest, that raged with perhaps 

J The Study of Adolescence, Ped. Sem., Vol. 1, p. 184. 
2 The Psychology of Religion, p. 242. 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 195 

increased fury. He was possessed with gloomy views of 
life, of its utter uncertainty, and of the absence of anything 
in it that could be taken up with whole-hearted courage. 
For a time there was emotional and ethical pessimism of an 
extreme sort. Perhaps the first reaction against this state of 
doubt showed itself in a kind of pantheism resting upon the 
beauty rather than the order of nature. Finally, the fixing 
of more certain religious views came with an objective study 
of the life of Christ. He adds that the whole fight was 
made single-handed, and that he was hurt rather than helped 
by religious instructors. ' ' * Even in this severe case the 
doubts were productive of much good, and cannot, therefore, 
be considered pathological. 

2. There is another type of individuals less bold and ac- 
tive. Like inexperienced or faint-hearted swimmers, as soon 
as they find themselves in deep water they rush back to terra 
firma. Doubt in their case does not lead to new beliefs, but 
a return to old ones. 

I quote again from Starbuck : "It was during my senior 
year at college that I first began to feel any troublesome 
doubts as to the things I had been taught ; the influence of 
study in the natural sciences, and the reading of some of the 
Huxley controversial articles, were responsible in part for 
this. However, my religious intensity increased at this time, 
and it was during this year that a conviction began to form 
in my mind that it was my duty to become a minister. ' ' 2 

The following case is from Prof. Leuba 's collection : 

Case B. A clergyman converted at 20. 

"At the age of twenty I entered a theological seminary 
and remained there four years. The third year I became a 
member of a conversational club whose motto was the Hebrew 
for " We stand united for investigation." During the course 
of our studies in rationalistic Biblical criticism, a night was 
devoted to the discussion on the Fourth Gospel, the author 
of the essay taking ground against the historical validity of 
this gospel, regarding it as a sort of philosophical writing on 
certain phases of Christian teaching. I remember the read- 
er's last sentence: "The Fourth Gospel is a great epic." 
By this essay the floodgates of doubt were opened to me. 
For three days the wild tide swept and surged past and 

1 The Study of Adolescence, Ped. -Sera., Vol. 1, p. 186. 

2 The Psychology of Religion, p. 242. 



196 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

around me. I felt I must give up the Gospel of John, and 
if so, my Christian faith also; and with this the universe 
would go. ... I yielded myself to what I conceived 
to be a Higher Guidance ... At the close of the period 
I found myself at one with all things. Peace, that was all. 
When I looked at myself, I found that I was stand- 
ing on the old ground, but cherishing a toleration of doubt, 
and a sincere sympathy with doubters such as I had never 
known before. ... I could take the logical standpoint, 
and could see that the arguments were quite convincing, and 
yet my inward peace of belief was in no way disturbed." 1 

In such cases as these the foundations of religion have 
been laid so deep in the subconscious soil and cemented so 
firmly by habit and the emotions that no storming of the intel- 
lect, however long and violent, can do them any real damage. 
Reason is as impotent to make them unbelievers as it is to 
convert confirmed skeptics and atheists to a belief in theo- 
logical dogmas. 

Prof. Leuba explains this paradox by saying that the 
Faith-state had supervened, by which he means that an inner 
adaptation had taken place by which " a living sense of re- 
lationship ' ' was established, < ' nay, a union, between the 
individual and ideal powers. " The strong desire and strug- 
gle to believe effects a new relationship between the emotions, 
the intellect, and the will ; a state akin to mysticism in which 
the subject feels an indescribable peace and harmony between 
his psychical powers. In this new readjustment only those 
ideas are permitted to enter consciousness for which the emo- 
tions and the will have an affinity. Prof. Leuba gives sev- 
eral interesting cases which bring out these facts very clearly. 2 

Belief is, in other words, more a matter of the basal pas- 
sional and volitional nature than of the intellect. " The 
essence of religion," writes Prof. Leuba in another place, "m 
a striving towards being, and not towards knowing." 3 We 
generally believe what we desire to believe, i. e., what will 
harmonize best with our individual being and help it to de- 
velop. "As a rule, " writes James, " we disbelieve all facts 
and theories for which we have no use." 4 And what those 



1 Psychology of Religious Phenomena, Am. Jour. Psych., Vol. 7, 
p. 372. 
2 Faith, Am. Jour. Religious Psy. and Ed., Vol. 1, pp. 65-82. 
Mm. Jour. Psych., Vol. 7, p. 313. 
* The Will to Believe, p. 10. 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 197 

44 facts and theories for which we have no use" are, are de- 
termined by the individual 's temperament, environment, and 
early education. Missionaries are so frequently unsuccessful 
because the people whom they wish to convert, especially the 
older ones, already have a religion and beliefs which satisfy 
their needs, and have no use for the religion the missionaries 
offer them. Like the clergyman just mentioned, they may 
be able to see that the arguments are convincing without 
having the inward peace of their beliefs in any way disturbed. 

3. Still another class meets with religious doubts for a 
time, and then bring the conflict to a close by either becoming 
passive or indifferent to religion, or else hostile to it, in 
which case they entertain other beliefs. Doubt has weakened 
or destroyed their religious impulse, but not their peace of 
mind, not their work instinct. 

Carry le, in his excellent chapter entitled ' The Everlasting 
No,' describes with psychological accuracy the terrible suf- 
fering which Teufelsdrockh endured during his doubting 
period. "Alas, shut out from Hope, in a deeper sense than 
we yet dream of ! For, as he (Teufelsdrockh) wanders weari- 
somely through this world, he has now lost all tidings of an- 
other and higher. Full of religion, or at least of religiosity, 
as our Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, 
in those days, he was wholly irreligious : 4 Doubt had dark- 
ened into Unbelief, ' says he ; ' shade after shade goes 
grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tar- 
tarean black.' . . . 'From suicide a certain aftershine 
(Nachschein) of Christianity withheld me ; perhaps also a 
certain indolence of character ; for was not that a remedy I 
had at any time within reach ? Often, however, was there a 
question present to me : Should some one now, at the turn- 
ing of that corner, blow thee suddenly out of space, into the 
other World, or other No-world, by pistol-shot, how were 
it? On which ground, too, I have often, in sea-storms and 
sieged cities and other death scenes, exhibited an imperturba- 
bility, which passed, falsely enough, for courage. ' " 

44 So had it lasted, " concludes the Wanderer, 44 so had it 
lasted, as in bitter protracted Death-agony, through long 
years. The heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly dew- 
drop, was smouldering in sulphurous, slow-consuming fire. 
Almost since earliest memory I had shed no tear ; or once 
only when I, murmuring half-audibly, recited Faust's Death- 
song, that wild Selig der den er im Siegesglanz findet (Happy 



198 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

whom he finds in Battle's splendor), and thought that of 
this last Friend even I was not forsaken, that Destiny itself 
could not doom me not to die. Having no hope, neither had 
I any definite fear, were it of Man or of Devil ; nay, I often 
felt as if it might be solacing, could the Arch-Devil himself, 
though in Tartarean terrors, but rise to me, that I might tell 
him a little of my mind. And yet, strangely enough, I lived 
in a continual, indefinite, pining fear ; tremulous, pusillani- 
mous, apprehensive of I knew not what ; it seemed as if all 
things in the Heavens above and the earth beneath would 
hurt me ; as if the Heavens and the Earth were but bound- 
less jaws of a devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, 
waited to be devoured. 

4 ' Full of such humor, and perhaps the miserablest man in 
the whole French Capital or Suburbs, was I, one sultry Dog- 
day, after much perambulation, toiling along the dirty little 
Rue Saint Thomas de VEnfer, among civic rubbish enough, 
in a close atmosphere, and over pavements hot as Nebuchad- 
nezzar's Furnace; whereby, doubtless, my spirits were little 
cheered ; when, all at once, there rose a Thought in me, and 
I asked myself : ' What art thou afraid of ? Wherefore, like 
a coward, dost thou, forever pip and whimper, and go cower- 
ing and trembling? Despicable biped! what is the sum 
total of the worst that lies before thee ? Death? Well, 
Death ; and say the pangs of Tophet, too, and all that the 
Devil and Man may, will or can do against thee ! Hast thou 
not a heart, canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be ; and, 
as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet 
itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, 
then ; I will meet it and defy it ! ' And as I so thought, 
there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul ; and 
I shook base Fear away from me forever. I was strong, of 
unknown strength ; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from that 
time, the temper of my misery was changed ; not Fear or 
whining Sorrow was it, but Indignation and grim, fire-eyed 
Defiance. 

' ' Thus had the Everlasting No (das ewige Nein) pealed 
authoritatively through all the recesses of my Being, of my 
Me ; and then was it that my whole Me stood up, in native, 
God-created majesty, and with emphasis recorded its Protest, 
such a Protest, the most important transaction in Life, may 
that same Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological point 
of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No had said : ' Behold, 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 199 

thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the 
Devil's); ' to which my whole Me now made answer ; < I am 
not thine, but Free, and forever hate thee ! ' 

1 <• It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual 
New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism ; perhaps I directly 
thereupon began to be a Man, ' n 

John Stuart Mill describes his doubting experience in a 
somewhat similar strain. 2 

So far the cases are perfectly normal. The doubting, how- 
ever strong, issues finally in mental tranquility and poise, 
optimism and healthy-mindedness. They continued to en- 
gage in their various callings and remained useful members 
of society. 

4. But now we come to a class of individuals in whose 
minds an internecine war is constantly raging. These are suf- 
ferers of that dread disease which Hegel calls, " das ungliLck- 
UcJie Bewustsein" — the unhappy consciousness which is for- 
ever at variance with itself. Doubting becomes a mania with 
them, they doubt everything, even their own existence ; it 
absorbs all their interests, usurps all their activities, and ends, 
as we have said, in pessimism, despair, melancholia and sui- 
cide. While among us, they are not of us, merely sad or 
cynical onlookers at the game of life and its players. Their 
world, as one of them described it, is ' » a humid prison-cell, 
where hope flits to and fro, like a poor bat, beating in aim- 
less flight the walls with timid wings, striking its little head 
against the mouldering roof. ' ' 3 

Listen to the morbid Oscar Wilde. "When I think of 
Religion at all, I feel as if I would like to found an order 
for those who cannot believe ; the Confraternity of the Faith- 
less, one might call it, where, on an altar on which no taper 
burned, a priest in whose heart peace had no dwelling might 
celebrate with unblessed bread and a chalice empty of wine. ' ' 4 
Such a priest poor Arthur Hugh Clough might have been, 
for never did so great a soul desire more to believe or suffer 
more because he had to doubt to the very end. 

The cultured French, before the recent Neo-Christian 
movement, were in this unhappy plight. Instead of enjoying 

1 Sartor Resartus. 

2 Autobiography, p. 133, and cf. Ped. Sem., Vol. 1, pp. 188-189. 

3 Quoted byLeuba: The Neo-Christian Movement, Am. Jour, of Psych., 
Vol. 5. 

4 De Profundis, N. Y., 1905. 



200 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

life, they dragged out a miserable existence. Without hope, 
without a God or an ideal to guide them in their life 's jour- 
ney, and being emotional rather than active and vigorous, 
they wandered about aimlessly like a child who is lost. ' 'We 
have no chapel where we can kneel down, ' ' cried a journalist 
piteously, "no more faith to sustain us, no more God to 
whom we can address our prayer. Our hearts are empty, 
our souls are without an ideal, and without hope. . . . 
You who have the good fortune of believing in a Sovereign 
Ruler, entreat him to reveal himself to us, for we long to 
suffer and die for a faith. ' n And des Esseintes, the hero of 
Huysman's novel, "A Rebours, " wails, "Alas! Courage 
fails me and my heart heaves. Oh, Saviour, have pity on 
the Christian who doubts, on the unbeliever who desires to 
believe, on the convict of life who must embark alone in the 
night under a starless firmament. ' ' 

The last sentence is one of deep psychological significance. 
For those individuals who have accumulated in their mental 
chamber many pieces of furniture in the shape of beliefs, re- 
ligious observances, etc., which time and association have 
endeared to them and made almost indispensable; doubting, 
which generally means the removal or destruction of these 
pieces of furniture, is very distressing and dangerous. It is 
the Christian or Jew or Mohammedan who once believed, but 
can do so no longer, that suffers, and not the individuals, be 
they philosophers or fools, who have never believed or be- 
lieved but little. Prof. Royce states the point very clearly 
in the following passage : "Any man may by chance, in his 
mind, come momentarily to question anything. That is so 
far a matter of passing association, and involves nothing sus- 
picious. A modern, or for that matter, an ancient thinker 
may moreover persistently question God's existence. If the 
thinker is a philosopher, or other theoretical inquirer, such 
doubts may foim part of his general plans, and may so be as 
healthy in character as any other forms of intellectual con- 
siderateness. But if a man's whole inner life, in so far as it 
is coherent, is built upon a system of plans and of faiths 
which involve, as part of themselves, the steadfast principle 
that to doubt God 's existence is horrible blasphemy, and if, 
nevertheless, after a fearful fit of darkness, such a man finds, 



!Leuba: Neo-Christian Movement. Am. Jour, of Psych., Vol. 5, p. 
479. 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 201 

amidst 'whole floods' of other 'blasphemies,' doubts about 
God not only suddenly forced upon him, but persistent des- 
pite his horror and his struggles, then it is vain for a trained 
skeptic of another age to pretend an enlightened sympathy, 
and to say to this agonized, nervous patient: 'Doubt? Why, 
I have doubted God's existence too.' The ducklings can 
safely swim, but that does not make their conduct more con- 
gruous with the plans and feelings of the hen. The profes- 
sional doubters may normally doubt. But that does not 
make doubt less a malady in those who suffer from it, and 
strive, and cry out, but cannot get free. ' ' 1 

" The organized mental life, the plans, insight, and chosen 
habits of the patient" must be taken into consideration, i.e., 
in relation to these is doubting normal or abnormal. 

"The evil of the present," says another Frenchman, 
speaking to students, ' ' resides in the abuse of thought, in 
the spirit of analysis, which he designates by the term intel- 
lectualism, — " that perversion of the mind which reduces us 
to seeking in life only the spectacles of life ; and in senti- 
ments only the ideas of sentiments. Intellectualism destroys 
intuition, that deep, primitive impulse of the soul which is 
the natural spring of action, and in so doing brings about the 
dryness of soul and moral inertia of which France is dying." 2 

Renan and others among Frenchmen, and Prof. James in 
our own country, have sought to console these unhappy peo- 
ple, and rid them of their dread disease by offering them a new 
gospel — ' ' The Will to Believe. ' ' ' ' Religion, ' ' says Renan, 
"is necessary — as eternal as poetry or love," and elsewhere 
he writes, " The most logical attitude of the thinker towards 
religion is: to behave as though religion were true.* We 
must act as though God and the Soul were proven. Religion 
is one of the numerous hypotheses, such as the waves of 
ether, or the electric, luminous, caloric, and nervous fluids, 
nay, the atom itself, which we know to be mere symbols and 
manners of speech, convenient for the explaining of certain 
phenomena, but which none the less we maintain. The more 
we reflect, the more we see the impossibility of proving ; but 
also the moral necessity of believing in these great premises : 
God and the Soul. Let us keep the category of the un- 
knowable. Parallels meet at the Infinite : Science and Reli- 



x The Case of John Bunyan, Psych. Rev., Vol. 1, p. 150. 
2 Quoted by Leuba, Am. Jour. Psych., Vol 5. 



202 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

gion doubtless meet there. And if not, we can say with 
Goethe : ' Wenn Grott betrilgt ist wohl betrogen. ' " 

Similarly Prof. James maintains the thesis that when in- 
tellectually in doubt we may, nay, we must believe in what 
seems to us the better of two options, provided, of course, 
that the options are genuine. If you desire to believe, he 
tells us, do so and cease propounding questions. There are 
no answers. No one can tell you whether you are right or 
wrong. Obliterate your doubts, throttle your reason, if need 
be, and believe ! It is the same advice which Tennyson 
offered in " The Ancient Sage." 

" For nothing worthy proving can be proven, 

Nor yet disproven ; wherefore thou be wise, 
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, 

And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith ! 
She reels not in the storm of warring words, 

She brightens at the clash of Yes and No, 
She sees the Best that glimmers through the Worst, 

She feels the sun is hid but for a night, 
She spies the summer thro' the winter bud, 

She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls, 
She hears the lark within the songless egg, 

She finds the fountain where they wailed l Mirage! 1 " 

But Tennyson, we have seen, was somewhat of a mystic, and 
even in those years when he was sounding the deepest depths 
of doubt he still had a deep-seated faith in God and in the 
" strong Son of God, Immortal Love. ' ' The untimely death 
of his beloved friend was a terrible shock, it made him skep- 
tical and pessimistic, but temperamentally he was religious 
and optimistic, and, therefore, when time finally healed his 
wound he found it not difficult to ' ' cling to faith ' ' and 
14 cleave to the sunnier side of doubt." But to bid those 
who are not natively mystical or so strongly religious and 
optimistic as he was, to believe in spite of their doubts is to 
bid them to do the impossible. Changing a few words in 
Coleridge 's Ode to Dejection we can hear them reply to their 
counsellors : 

It were a vain endeavor 

Though we should list 1 forever 

To appeals most eloquent ; 

We may not hope from counsels kind to win 

The passion and the life whose fountains are within. 

To reason with one who is a slave to doubt is as futile as 
reasoning with a tobacco or liquor fiend. It is not advice 
they need, but a remedy, something to cure their disease. 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 203 

They are generally conscious of the fact that their doubts are 
absurd and abnormal, but are powerless to prevent them. In 
all cases of fixed ideas or Zwangsvortellungen, under which 
general term the insanity of doubting and questioning or 
Grubelsucht falls, " there is an almost absolute impotence of 
the will, not only to control the absurd ideas, but also an 
irrestrainable tendency to those acts" (to which the ideas 
lead). 1 "To one whose mind is healthy," writes one of 
these unfortunates, " thoughts come and go unnoticed ; with 
me they have to be faced, thought about in a peculiar fash- 
ion, and then disposed of as finished, and this often when I 
am utterly wearied and would be at peace ; but the call is 
imperative. This goes on to the hindrance of all natural 
action. If I were told that the staircase was on fire and I 
had only a minute to escape, and the thought arose — ' Have 
they sent for fire-engines? Is it probable that the man who 
has the key is on hand ? Is the man a careful sort of person ? 
Will the key be hanging on a peg? Am I thinking rightly? 
Perhaps they don 't lock the depot ' — my foot would be lifted 
to go down ; I should be conscious to excitement that I was 
losing my chance ; but I would be unable to stir until all 
these absurdities were entertained and disposed of. In the 
most critical moments of my life, when I ought to have been 
so engrossed as to leave no room for any secondary thoughts, I 
have been oppressed by the inability to be at peace. And in 
the most ordinary circumstances it is all the same. Let me 
instance the other morning I went to walk. The day was 
biting cold, but I was unable to proceed except by jerks. 
Once I got arrested, my feet in a muddy pool. One foot 
was lifted to go, knowing that it was not good to be standing 
in water, but there I was fast, the cause of detention being 
the discussing with myself the reasons why I should not 
stand in that pool. ' ' 2 

There is a prophylactic for this, much more efficient than any 
philosophical argument or impassioned exhortation, namely, 
work — interesting and absorbing work. Work by satisfying 
a deep-seated instinct in us, gives pleasure and satisfaction 
and withdraws the mind from morbid hair-splittings, barren 
reflections and contemplations. Satisfying the instinct of 
workmanship, if it does not create ' the will to live, ' certainly 

1 See Cowles: Insistent and Fixed Ideas, Amer. Jour. Psych., Vol. 1, 
p. 226. 

2 James: Psychology, Vol. 2, p. 284 footnote. 



204 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

strengthens it. The muse of idleness is the demon Doubt, 
and the theme of his dirge is pessimism, despair, death ! 
The doubting mania is probably more a disease of the will 
than of the intellect, and one of the best means of developing 
the will is work. 

' « Produce ! Produce ! ' ' cries Carlyle in his chapter en- 
titled ' ' The Everlasting Yea. ' 7 « 'Were it but the pitifullest 
infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God 's name ! 
'T is the utmost thou hast in thee : out with it, then. Up, 
Up ! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
whole might. Work while it is called To-day; for the Night 
cometh, wherein no man can work. ' ' The same Gospel of 
Work is preached in Goethe 's Faust, and has recently been 
emphasized from the physiological side by Prof. Jaques Loeb, 
and from the pedagogical side by Dr. Wm. H. Burnham. 

Religious doubts make their first appearance during the 
4 storm and stress' period of adolescence. " Doubt seems to 
belong to youth" writes Starbuck, "as its natural heritage. " 
More than two-thirds of his cases and three-fourths of those 
studied by Dr. Burnham « ' passed through a period some- 
time, usually during adolescence, when religious authority 
and theological doctrines were taken up and seriously ques- 
tioned. " 1 It is then that the "unconscious cerebration" 
wells up above the threshold, and the middle layer of tan- 
gential fibres, corresponding to Hughling Jackson 's highest 
level, begin to function. The reasoning faculty rapidly de- 
velops, new sensations begin to pour in, the reproductive 
powers and sex instincts are born, the emotions are height- 
ened; love, altruism, and the social instincts suddenly 
emerge ; in short a new consciousness is born. Former hab- 
its of thought and action are found unfit for the changed con- 
ditions and are abandoned. Old beliefs are cast into the 
scales and too frequently found wanting. The child is a 
child no more. The young savage suddenly becomes poet, 
philosopher, philanthropist, reformer, with his lofty ideals, 
gigantic plans, air-castles, his vague yearnings and cravings, 
and his pleasing moods of melancholy. The brain cells and 
nerves are charged with vitality up to the danger point. 
Whether the storm will blow over without causing any dam- 
age or not will, of course, depend on the resistance power of 
the cells and nerves, that is upon the neurological condition, 

1 The Psych, of Religion, p. 232. 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 205 

and this in its turn will be determined largely by the indi- 
vidual's general health, education, environment, heredity, 
etc. 

Adolescence is the golden age of heredity. Now every 
link in the chain stretching back for many generations is put 
to test and if any of them have been abused the adolescent 
pays the penalty. In this sense he suffers for the sins of his 
fathers. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that "in 
some instances, ' ' as Maudsley says, "physiological evolution 
of puberty passes into a pathological revolution. ' ' Next to 
heredity as a predisposing cause of insanity comes education, 
or rather mal-education, and this we find is also the most 
common cause of doubt. Early, narrow, religious training 
followed by the study of science and philosophy, by contact 
with a new and much less orthodox environment, and by the 
growth which these factors naturally bring about has blighted 
the happiness of many an adolescent, and robbed him forever 
of the blessings of religion. Mr. H. Fielding, in his « Hearts 
of Men, ' has given an admirable account of his own early re- 
ligious education and the causes which led him to break with 
it. He was brought up he tells us until he was twelve en- 
tirely by women, and from these he received his moral and 
religious ideas. At twelve he was sent off to a large boy's 
school, and there his troubles began. Little by little the 
great incongruities between the world as he had seen it 
through his aunts ' spectacles, and the world as it really is, 
between the Christian religion as he had been taught it, " the 
teaching of Christ, the very simple teaching that is in the 
Gospel, ' ' and the actual concrete Christianity with which he 
now came in daily contact, the disharmony between the 
accepted doctrines and professed beliefs and the habitual con- 
duct of those about him, and the world at large, forced them- 
selves upon him and "caused him to shrink from religion 
and everything pertaining to it." " He found himself at eigh- 
teen far adrift from all guidance and counsel, shunning reli- 
gion because he saw that the teachings of Christ were quite 
unadapted for the world he had to live in, and condemning his 
teachers for what seemed to him hypocrisy.' ' His reaction, 
however, was not yet complete. The aversion he felt towards 
religion was not as yet well defined, but vague and undiffer- 
entiated, so to speak. "About this time he read the ' Ori- 
gin of Species' and i The Descent of Man. ' This surprised 
him. It was not only that this was his first introduction to 



206 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

the science of biology, his first peep behind the curtain of 
modern forms into the coulisses of the world that interested 
him, but there was here contained a complete refutation, a 
disastrous overthrow, of all that system of the Creation which 
he had been taught. The Old Testament was wrong, the 
New Testament was wrong. It was all ' an old woman 's 
tale. ' At the touch of science the whole fabric of religion 
fell into dust. Christianity was a fraud, and there was an 
end of it. ; ' Such biographies and confessions show us bet- 
ter than any metaphysical theories or psychological analysis 
could, the main cause of religious doubt, its origin, and the 
course of its development. Taught in early childhood to 
believe the Bible literally; refused, evaded, and even de- 
ceived when innocent and natural questions were asked, 
given an ethical code, and ideals which though lofty and en- 
nobling to the mature man, are as yet anti-natural and im- 
possible for children and youths, it is little wonder that so 
many thoughtful and earnest adolescents, when they begin to 
think for themselves and study the sciences are tortured with 
doubts, until finally they bolt the whole religion. The clergy 
and religions pedagogues cannot be reminded too often that 
not only is it dangerous to the well-being of their charges and 
to religion to teach the bible literally, but also that the same 
ideals cannot be preached to old and young alike. Children, 
adolescents, marriageable young men and women, middle 
aged persons, and senescents, each need different ideals and 
sermons. Religious teaching, like secular teaching should 
be graded to suit the varying needs of the different stages of 
the individual's development. 1 

What evil effects the older religious pedagogical system 
was productive of can be further seen from the many 
replies received by Drs. Hall, Leuba, and Starbuck. One 
respondent writes, " When sixteen I read the doctrine of 
evolution and ' The Idea of God. ' Everything seemed 
different ; I felt as if I had been living all my life on a little 
island and now was pushed off into a great ocean. I have 
been splashing around, and hardly know my bearings yet. I 
don't see any need for a belief in the resurrection. " 2 An- 
other writes, "At fifteen I began to give up the faith of my 
childhood point by point, as it would not stand the test of 

x See an excellent article by Jean du Buy: 'Stages of Religious De- 
velopment,' Am. Jour, of Religious Psy. and Ed., Vol. 1, pp. 7-29. 
2 Starbuck: loc cit., p. 233. 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 207 

reason. First the belief in miracles went, then the divinity 
of Christ ; then at eighteen metaphysical studies showed me 
that I could not prove the existence of a personal God, and 
left me without a religion. ' ' * And so on ad libitum. There 
is a passage in the Talmund which reads « ' Histallek min 
Ha' sofek, M " Keep away from doubt." This has been the 
policy of all churches, but it is hardly a good pedagogic pre- 
cept. We should rather face all honest spontaneous doubts 
and endeavor to overcome them. "A preliminary doubt, " 
says Sir W. Hamilton, "is the fundamental condition of 
philosophy, ' ' and Aristotle declared that ' ' Philosophy is the 
art of doubting well. ' ' 

There is as much truth as poetry in Tennyson's lines, 

u There lies more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds. " 

As also in the following : 

" Who never doubted never half believed; 
Where doubt there truth is — 'tis her shadow." 

The child should be so educated that when the doubting 
period comes his doubts will be of the kind consecrated by 
Descartes — ' dubito ut intelligam, ' and characterized by 
Goethe as c ' the active skepticism whose whole aim is to con- 
quer itself. " It is the task and duty of religious pedagogy 
to devise, along some such line as suggested by Dr. du Buy, 
a curriculum adapted to the changing needs of the growing 
child, and harmonizing with our modern civilization, and 
thus prepare him for the battle before it comes. 

SCIBNTISM AND APATHY. 

Between the believers and skeptics, both of whom are 
swayed by their emotions and volitions, stand the disbelievers 
or atheists who hate religion, and the scientists and others 
who are indifferent to it. The scientist deals with religion 
in the same impartial, impersonal spirit as he does with the 
arts and the natural sciences. He is no partisan ; he is the 
champion of no special form of religion, not even the one in 
which he was reared. Facts and truths are what he seeks, 
and he cares not in whose domain he finds them. He com- 
pares, analyses, and dissects religions, reverently and sympa- 

iStarbuck: loc cit., p. 237. 



208 Pathological Aspects of Religions, 

thetically, to be sure, but with as little compunction as he 
would dissect an animal or analyze a chemical compound. 
He unhesitatingly records his results, and if they disagree 
with his previous beliefs and notions, the latter are displaced, 
and he either sees a greater God in the universe, discovers 
larger and nobler religious truths, or else he goes in the op- 
posite direction and denies the existence of God, becomes 
skeptic, agnostic, or atheist. 

Truth is the Holy Grail which he sets out to find in a truly 
religious spirit. He is willing to suffer martyrdom for Truth 
as the religionist is for God. 

"It fortifies my soul to know 
That, though I perish, Truth is so — " 

sings Clough, while Huxley exclaims : ' My only consolation 
lies in the reflection that, however bad our posterity may be- 
come, so far as they hold by the plain rule of not pretending 
to believe what they have no reason to believe, because it 
may be to their advantage so to pretend, they will not have 
reached the lowest depths of immorality. And that delight- 
ful, brilliant, Clifford writes : 4 Belief is desecrated when 
given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace 
and private pleasure of the believer. . . . Whoso would 
deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity 
of his belief with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any 
time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain 
which can never be wiped away. ... If a belief has 
been accepted on insufficient evidence (even though the be- 
lief be true, as Clifford on the same page explains), the 
pleasure is a stolen one. . . . It is sinful because it is 
stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to 
guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a pestilence which 
may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest 
of the town. . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and 
for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evi- 
dence. ' ' n This is the scientific attitude par excellence, and 
the number of Cloughs, Huxleys, and Cliffords, in this re- 
spect, in our midst is almost countless. It will be seen that 
the true scientist differs but little from the true religionist ; 
truth is the God he worships with genuine religious fervor. 
There is another type of individuals belonging to the Paine- 

1 Quoted in James: The Will to Believe, pp. C-7. 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 209 

Ingersoll-Bradlaugh type who have crossed the Rubicon of 
Agnosticism and openly express their contempt for the reli- 
gion in which they were reared, and not infrequently for all 
religion. Replying to a questionnaire sent out by Prof. 
Leuba, Case XIV writes : ' * I do not perform religious exer- 
cises, public or private. To me such practices are incompre- 
hensible, childish, and absurd. I have no religious needs. I 
am devoid of religious feelings. I never had any religious ex- 
perience. I am very seldom in church. When in one I wonder 
at the phenomenon of otherwise intelligent persons acting 
like a lot of heathens. My principal feeling is one of con- 
tempt ; I also feel ashamed for them for being such monkeys. 
My physical state at such times is great uneasiness, a feeling 
of restraint, and an intense desire to get in the open air. 
Religion, to my conception, is another name for superstition ; 
it is one kind of superstition. I consider it to be utterly 
useless and superfluous, if not positively harmful. My 
grandfather was a Presbyterian minister. My mother was a 
strong Presbyterian. She believed literally. She taught 
me her faith diligently from my earliest childhood. She was 
never severe or strict, but taught in a loving and charming 
way. I attended church and Sunday-school until fourteen. 
All my early associations tended to make me an orthodox 
Christian. I have never met a more conscientious person 
than my mother was. I suppose I accepted her teachings as 
a matter of course, without reflection when very young. 
When old enough to study physical geography, I learned that 
some things she believed were not true. Later in biology, 
that many more things she believed were not true, and I have 
been learning ever since what an immense mass of supersti- 
tion her belief was. ' 71 

The apathist reacts more passively to religion. To him 
religion is an indifferent matter. He is willing to let religious 
problems take care of themselves. He cares little whether 
God does or does not exist. He has very little need of Him. 
His thoughts and energies are spent on the more immediate 
practical affairs of life. Thus a Bowdoin student writes in 
reply to a questionnaire sent out by Dr. Hall. " Concerning 
a future life I care little ; what I want to know is how to 
make the most of the life I have now ; how to be of the most 
service to the rest of humanity. One life is all I can take 

1 Contents of Religious Consciousness, Monist, July, '01. 
14 



210 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

care of at a time. This « me ' I have got, and before I make 
any arrangements for another I want to know what I am to 
do with this. ' ' These thoughts are better expressed by Miss 
Alice Stead Binney in her poem entitled, 

MY CREED. 

" I think that many a soul has God within, 
Yet knows no church nor creed, no word of prayer, 
No law of life save that which seems most fair 
And true and just, and helpful to its kin 
And kind ; and holds that act alone as sin 
That lays upon another soul its share 
Of human pain, of sorrow, or of care, 
Or plants a doubt where faith has ever been. 
The heart that seeks with jealous joy the best 
In every other heart it meets, the way 
Has found to make its own condition blessed. 
To love God is to strive through life's short day 
To comfort grief, to give the weary rest, 
To hope and love — that surely is to pray. 11 * 

Case XIII of Leuba's collection writes that she has no 
craving after unnamable things, no panting heart sighing 
after the starry heaven. Life with its parental and social 
duties is enough to fill her heart and mind with solid con- 
tentment. " Post-mundane matters will take care of them- 
selves. " Continuing, she writes : " I never had any special 
religious experieDce that I am aware of. I was born to cer- 
tain religious observances and beliefs and never troubled my- 
self about the matter at all especially. As I grew older some 
dogmas were a stumbling block to me, and as I read and be- 
came familiar with some truly great writers — Renan for one — 
I grew more and more skeptical in a way. But I never an- 
alyzed my thoughts or dwelt very long on any of these mat- 
ters. ... I scratch out Faith because during the last 15 or 
20 years I have read so much, seen and learned so much, 
that I am not sure what amount of faith I may have left in 
anything. I don't trouble about it; life is really too short 
to spend in dwelling much upon merely speculative thoughts. 
I have half a mind to tear all this ■« stuff ' up. " 

Nabatov, one of the characters in Tolstoi's 4 Resurrec- 
tion ' is described as follows : 

"In religious matters he was again a typical peasant, he 
never thought of metaphysical questions, of the beginning of 
all beginnings, of life beyond the grave. God was to him 
just as to Arago, a hypothesis, for which he had no necessity 

1 The New Century, April, 1902. 



The Intellectual Element in Religion. 211 

thus far. It did not at all concern him how life began ; ac- 
cording to Moses or according to Darwin and Darwinism, 
which looked so important to his comrades, was to him but 
a play of thoughts, even as the story of creation in six days. 

He was not occupied by the question, how the world be- 
gan, mainly because the question how to live in it the better 
was always of greater importance to him. Nor did he ever 
think of future life, carrying in the depth of his soul the firm, 
calm conviction which he inherited from his ancestors, and 
which is common to all agriculturists, that nothing ends 
in either the animal or vegetable kingdom, but is always 
changed from one form to another, turning into grains, grains 
into a chicken, a tadpole into a frog, a worm into a butterfly, 
an acorn into an oak, thus man, too, is not destroyed, he 
only changes. He believed in this and therefore he faced 
death boldly and even cheerfully; he firmly bore the suffer- 
ings which led to it, but he neither could nor cared to speak 
about it. He liked to woik and was always busy with prac- 
tical things and he directed his comrades to such practical 
work." 

There are to-day in Russia a number of sects such as the 
Stundists, the Molokany, the Starovery, the Nemoliaki, the 
Deniers, the Chalopouts, and others who are thoroughly im- 
bued with the rationalistic and pragmatic spirit. They em- 
phasize the importance of good deeds and brotherly love and 
reject all church dogmas and ceremonies. 1 

Others belonging to this indifferent type, Prof. Leuba 
tells us, " simply conform cold-heartedly to the same religious 
customs of the circle in which they happen to live, and no 
one ever knows the truth, not even themselves. On favor- 
able conditions they may wonder at their religious indiffer- 
ence, yet never reach the revolutionary conclusion that reli- 
gion is for them a mere fiction. ' ' 2 

These people are not so few and exceptional as many are 
inclined to think. Their number is large and constantly in- 
creasing, and there are many indications that we are passing 
through a stage of religious indifference similar to that expe- 
rienced by the citizens of the later Roman Empire. 

" They are legion, ' ' says Prof. Leuba, " the men in whose 
lives God — any kind of God is a i quantitie negligable ; ' 

1 See N. Tsakni: La Russie Sectaire, pp. 135-251. 

2 Contents of Religious Consciousness, Monist, July, 1901. 



212 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

they live without Him satisfied, they die without Him 
happy." 

One is naturally very loath to stigmatize these people as ab- 
normal. They are often, as Mill says, "the world's brightest 
ornaments." Many of them have master minds and lofty 
ideals which guide them in their life 's work. They are some- 
times more noble and virtuous than the truly religious indi- 
vidual. Like the religionists, they can point with pride to 
their long list of illustrious and immortal martyrs. Like the 
religionists, too, they actively engage in all kinds of philan- 
thropic and educational work, and have probably contributed 
as much to the uplifting of the race ; and yet, if it be true 
that religion is a mental faculty, innate or instinctive as Max 
Muller maintains; a component element of the contents of 
consciousness of all peoples (Tylor); if religiosity is a normal 
and useful state, then we are forced to conclude that they are 
abnormal, i. e., they are lacking in an essential element 
which goes to make up the normal man. If, on the contrary, 
religion, although useful and normal in the past is now 
rapidly losing its usefulness and becoming an atavism ; if it 
is to be supplanted in the near future by something loftier, 
and better adapted to the needs of a scientific age, as Guyau, 
Sergi, and others confidently predict, — and indeed we already 
see some significant signs of this change in the various Free- 
religion and Ethical Culture movements in this country and 
the Neo-Christian movement in France — if these predic- 
tions prove true, then the people we are discussing are not 
abnomal. They are the forerunners, the UbermenscJien as 
Nietzsche calls them, whom the masses will follow as quickly 
as they can. But to which of these two categories they really 
belong only the future can tell. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Volitional Element in Religion. 
The Relation of Religion to Conduct. 

In the preceding chapters we have attempted to show the 
roles played by the emotions and the intellect in the total 
religious experience. Here we shall endeavor to iDdicate the 
influence of the will on the same, or in other words the rela- 
tion of religion to conduct. It will be remembered that a 
group of scholars, such as Feuerbach, Bradley, Marshall, and 
others have defined religion in terms of will. Their defini- 
tions, while inadequate, are useful as complements and cor- 
rectives to the other definitions which emphasize the emotions 
or the intellect. They remind us that emotions and beliefs 
are of little consequence unless they lead to action of some 
sort and influence the life and conduct of the individual. In 
the words of Joad in Racine's "Athalie, " "Lafoi qui n'agit 
point, est-ce une foi sincere ? ' ' As has often been said be- 
fore, the bond between the feelings, the intellect, and the 
will are so close that we cannot stimulate any one without 
producing excitations in the other two. 

In barbarous times true religious feeling and belief de- 
manded for its satisfaction sacrifices, horrible mutilations, 
flagellations, and numerous other indescribable sufferings ; 
in medieval times it produced bloody wars and revolutions, 
crusades, inquisitions, and reformations ; in our own day it 
is the cause of missionary expeditions to every known corner 
of the globe, of much of the charitable and educational work 
carried on every day; and finally, it has always been at the 
bottom of the thousand and one religious rites and ceremonies 
performed in every age and land. 4 i The more one searches, ' ' 
writes Fielding Hall, ' i the more will he be sure that there 
is only one guide to a man 's faith, to his soul, and that is 
not any book or system he may profess to believe, but the 
real system that he follows — that is to say that a man's be- 
liefs can be known even to himself from his acts only. For 



214 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

it is futile to say that a man believes in one thing and does 
another." 1 According to Kant, religion arose from morals, 
and in his own mind the two could not be separated or even 
differentiated. 

The religiosity of the sentimentalist is not true religion 
any more than are the mere beliefs of the philosopher, the 
dogmas of the theologian, or the acts of the moralist. To 
be religious one must love and worship his God with all his 
heart, and soul, and might. He must labor for His greater 
honor and glory, and be constantly guided in his actions by 
what he supposes to be his God's will and desire. In a 
passage of his treatise against the heretics, Calvin makes a 
fanatical, and what we should now consider an almost savage 
declaration, which, because of its very forcefulness, illustrates 
most lucidly what the fervent religious spirit is, or can be, 
when the occasion demands. It is similar to the one quoted 
from St. Jerome in the section of the first chapter dealing 
with Hate. Addressing himself to the "wretches" who 
wished to allow the heretics to go unpunished, he assures 
them that such is not the will of God. "It is not without 
cause," he tells them, "that God has destroyed all the 
human affections which have effeminated the heart. It is 
not without cause that he expels the love of the father for 
his children, the love of brothers and relatives, that he ren- 
ders husbands immune to the flatteries and cajoleries of their 
wives ; in short, that he strips men, so to speak, of their na- 
tures, in order that nothing may chill their zeal. Why does 
he require such an extreme, unyielding rigor, unless it is to 
show that one does not do Him the honor which one owes 
Him unless he prefers His service to every human regard, 
unless he spare neither parents, blood nor life, and unless he 
put himself in utter forgetfulness of all humanity whenever 
it is the question of fighting for His glory. " Calvin was, of 
course, an enthusiast, but this is true in a greater or less de- 
gree of almost all religionists. Whatever we may think of 
some of the questions put until very recently by the Metho- 
dist examiners to the young candidate for the ministry, such 
as, 'Are you willing to be damned for the Lord?' etc., they 
indicate clearly that religious people regard that kind of re- 
ligiosity which is unwilling or unable to express itself in 
deeds, of little worth. And this is as true of our ordinary 
secular experiences as of our religious ones. 

1 The Soul of a People, p. 13. 



The Volitional Element in Religion, 215 

The medieval knight-errant roamed about with a patch on 
his eye and a vow in his heart seeking to run a small course 
with any other knight for the greater love and honor of his 
lady, and even in these days of intellectual hypertrophy and 
emotional atrophy the love-sick swain, though much less 
artistic or fantastic in his manners and methods, is hardly 
less active in his efforts to win the favor of his fair dulcinea. 
Even among the lower animals, especially the domesticated 
ones, this relationship between the feelings and actions is 
often very beautifully expressed. Indeed so natural and in- 
dissoluble is this bond between feeling and action, that we 
often hear it asked, of what value is love or any feeling for 
that matter, if it does not lead to action ? To which chang- 
ing somewhat the dictum of St. James we may answer, " love 
without works is dead. ' ' 

The relationship between belief and conduct is equally as 
close. The ancients, believing that their gods delighted in 
sacrifice, and the greater the sacrifice the more acceptable it 
was, offered their own children on bloody altars ; the Thugs 
committed murder for the same reason, the Jews put the 
Gentile nations to the sword, the Christian Church sanctioned 
the Crusades and Inquisitions, the Thibetan incessantly re- 
volved his praying machine, the Catholic counted his beads, 
and missionaries to-day go into voluntary exile among savage 
peoples all because they believe that by so doing they are 
best worshipping their God. Indeed, if we were to repeat 
all that has heretofore been written we would not have begun 
to give a complete account of the relationship between belief 
and conduct. It is thus seen how inextricably interwoven 
are the feelings, intellect, and will ; that it is only by ab- 
straction that we can separate them, and by the method of 
concomitant variation determine the relative value of each, 
and the part it plays in the whole experience. In this chap- 
ter we shall deal with those religious experiences in which 
the volitional element predominates. 

Fanaticism. 

The very word fanaticism suggests immediately psychical 
abnormality, or frenzy, and excessive religious activity, and 
this in general is what it really is. It is the product of a 
strong will and weak or narrow mind, just as religious mys- 
ticism is frequently a product of the latter plus strong emo- 



216 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

tional feeling. The very fact that men devote their whole 
lives to religion and hold all other human interests and activ- 
ities in contempt is sufficient proof of their psychical unbal- 
ance. The normal, well-rounded, and well-balanced individ- 
ual has room in his life for human and worldly interests as 
well as for religion, but the narrow, unbalanced religionist 
has no place in his life for anything non-religious. We have 
already seen that this is true of the mystic, we shall now see 
that it is just as true of the religious fanatic. 

44 When devoutness is unbalanced, " says James, "one of 
its vices is called Fanaticism. Fanaticism (when not a mere 
expression of ecclesiastical ambition) is only loyalty carried 
to a convulsive extreme. When an intensely loyal and nar- 
row mind is once grasped by the feeling that a certain super- 
human person is worthy of its exclusive devotion, one of the 
first things that happens is that it idealizes the devotion it- 
self. To adequately realize the merits of the idol gets to be 
considered the one great merit of the worshipper; and the 
sacrifices and servilities by which savage tribesmen have from 
time immemorial exhibited their faithfulness to chieftans are 
now outbid in favor of the deity. Vocabularies are exhausted 
and languages altered in the attempt to praise him enough ; 
death is looked on as a gain if it attract his grateful notice ; 
and the personal attitude of being his devotee becomes what 
one might almost call a new and exalted kind of professional 
specialty within the tribe. " 1 

Vambery, quoted by James, describes a dervish whom he 
met in Persia, "who had solemnly vowed, thirty years be- 
fore, that he would never employ his organs of speech other- 
wise but in uttering everlastingly the name of his favorite, 
Ali, AU. He thus wished to signify to the world that he 
was the most devoted partisan of the Ali, who had been dead 
a thousand years. In his own home, speaking with his wife, 
children, and friends, no other word but 'Ali ! ' ever passed 
his lips. If he wanted food or drink, or anything else, he 
expressed his wants still, by repeating ' Ali !' Begging or 
buying at the bazaar, it was always 4 Ali !' Treated ill or gen- 
erously, he would still harp on his monotonous ' Ali ! ' Lat- 
terly his zeal assumed such tremendous proportions that like 
a madman, he would race the whole day, up and down the 
streets of the town, throwing his stick high up into the air, 

1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 341. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 217 

and shriek out all the while, at the top of his voice, 'Ali ! ' " * 
Ali himself, who has been called the Peter of Islam, sprang 
up when Mohammed asked of his few followers who would 
second him in his labors and become his vicegerent and Kha- 
lif (successor), and exclaimed: "I, O Apostle of God, will 
be thy minister. I will knock out the teeth, tear out the 
eyes, rip up the bellies, and cut off the legs of all who shall 
dare to oppose thee. " 2 

" An immediate consequence of this condition of mind," 
continues James, "is jealousy for the deity's honor. How 
can the devotee show his loyalty better than by sensitiveness 
in this regard? The slightest affront or neglect must be re- 
sented, the deity's enemies must be put to shame. In ex- 
ceedingly narrow minds and active wills, such a care may be- 
come an engrossing preoccupation ; and crusades have been 
preached and massacres instigated for no other reason than 
to remove a fancied slight upon the God. . . Theologies 
representing the gods as mindful of their glory, and churches 
with imperialistic policies have conspired to fan this temper 
to a glow, so that intolerance and persecution have come to 
be vices associated by some of us inseparably with the saintly 
mind. They are unquestionably its besetting sins. . . The 
saintly temper is a moral temper and a moral temper has 
often to be cruel. It is a partisan temper and that is cruel. 
Between his own and Jehovah's enemies a David knows no 
difference ; a Catherine of Sienna, panting to stop the warfare 
among Christians which was the scandal of her epoch, can 
think of no better method of union among them than a cru- 
sade to massacre the Turks ; Luther finds no word of protest 
or regret over the atrocious tortures with which the Anabap- 
tist leaders were put to death ; and a Cromwell praises the 
Lord for delivering his enemies into his hands for ' execu- 
tion.'" 3 

This lengthy quotation is a beautiful literary description of 
fanaticism, but it does not tell us what fanaticism is in itself ; 
that is, it does not explain why the fanatic is ofttimes cruel, 
for example, and a partisan. A little further on, however, 
the writer probes deeper into the matter. "In theopathic 
characters, like those whom we have just considered, the love 
of God must not be mixed with any other love. Father and 

1 Ibid., p. 341. 

2 P. DeLacy Johnstone: Muhammad, p. 64. 

3 Varieties of Keligious Experience, p. 342. 



218 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

mother, sisters, brothers, and friends are felt as interfering 
distractions ; for sensitiveness and narrowness, when they 
occur together, as they often do, require above all things a 
simplified world to dwell in. Variety and confusion are too 
much for their powers of comfortable adaptation. But, 
whereas your aggressive pietist (fanatic) reaches his unity 
objectively, by forcibly stamping disorder and divergence 
out, your retiring pietist (mystic) reaches his subjectively, 
leaving disorder in the world at large, but making a smaller 
world in which he dwells himself and from which he elimi- 
nates it altogether. Thus, alongside of the church militant 
with its prisons, dragonades, and inquisition methods, we have 
the church fugient, as one might call it, with its hermitages, 
monasteries, and sectarian organizations, both churches pur- 
suing the same object — to unify the life, and simplify the 
spectacle presented to the soul. ' ' * 

It is the instinct of self-preservation, then, that makes the 
fanatic cruel and partisan. He must have uniformity, sim- 
plicity, and order ; an environment to which he can easily 
adapt himself, or else perish. "The (normal) religious 
man, " says Murisier, " ordinarily lives a double life, an inte- 
rior and exterior. He feels and acts, meditates, worships, 
and attends to his daily work ; without experiencing the least 
difficulty in reconciling these diverse activities. He passes 
easily from one to the other, or evenc ombines and identi- 
fies them." 2 In other words the normally religious man 
adapts himself readily to an ever-changing environment. The 
abnormally religious man, however, the narrow-minded fa- 
natic or mystic, finds himself, under such conditions, con- 
fused, uncertain, unhappy, divided and disaggregated, so to 
speak. Two courses are open to him. He may find mental 
peace and poise, and union with God by either renouncing 
himself and engaging in some kind of absorbing work, pre- 
ferably religious work, or he may renounce the world and find 
peace and union with God in his own inner self by contem- 
plation and introspection. The former course is pursued by 
fanatics, or those abnormals who belong to the active, mobile 
type of individuals ; the latter by mystics or those abnormals 
who belong to the passive, contemplative type. 

Ubid., pp. 348-349. 

2 Les Maladies du Sentiment Relgieuse. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 219 

A certain Pogatzki, cited by Murisier, said that he always 
saw visions of the devil and never of God, when he was idle 
or in contemplation, but whenever he was occupied and 
overcoming obstacles he experienced great joy and peace of 
mind. 

Finney, the revivalist, tells of an acquaintance of his who 
secluded himself for seventeen days praying to God contin- 
uously, as if he would force Him to come to terms, but his 
efforts were unsuccessful. He then determined to go forth 
into the world and work for the Kingdom of God, and im- 
mediately he felt the Divine Spirit in his soul and expe- 
rienced a great and unalloyed happiness. 

Again, an American Presbyterian minister writes : "I 
have suffered all the horrors of profound melancholia. 
Thoughts of blasphemy which I cannot allow myself to 
repeat, temptations which I dare not mention flitted across 
my mind without my wishing it and without being able to 
repress them. My poor soul, powerless against them was 
their plaything. I often thought I heard Satan speaking to 
me, mocking and triumphing over me, asking : where is thy 
God now? These thoughts presented themselves to me so 
suddenly and with so much force and reality that I could not 
believe they were born in my mind ; without a doubt Satan 
had received the power to humiliate me. In my anxiety, I 
often rolled on the floor of my study, passing whole hours 
there in despair. If it had been possible for me to do so I 
would have certainly renounced the ministry. But I was 
obliged to preach, and at the last moment I put myself to 
preparing my sermon with the feeling that this side of Hell 
it was not possible to be more unworthy and more wretched 
than I was. Once I had begun, however, my sermon 
interested me ; I forgot myself in its preparation. Sunday 
I preached like an apostle and reclaimed my soul from 
death. 1 

In these three cases, typical of a very large class, we have 
individuals who, unlike the mystics, feel wretched and out 
of touch with God whenever they seclude themselves and 
have only their morbid thoughts and uncanny hallucinations 
for company, but are happy, contented, and reconciled with 
God as soon as they forget themselves in interesting and 
absorbing work which dispels their reveries, rests the brain, 

1 Murisier : Les Maladies du Sentiment Religieuse, pp. 79-82. 



220 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

and gives the muscles the exercise they so much need. The 
best kind of work is that which is done for and in a commu- 
nity. The social instinct is so strongly developed in the 
fanatic that he feels comfortable only when he is in close 
contact with his fellow men. The minister preached " with 
the fervor of an apostle ' ' when he stood before his congre- 
gation, and even when he was engaged in preparing his 
sermon the thought of his congregation and the effect of his 
sermon upon them helped him to forget himself. 

In no other field of activity, perhaps, can these needs of 
the fanatic be so well satisfied as in the religious, and that is 
the reason why so many individuals belonging to this type 
are religious leaders. Religion teaches self-sacrifice and 
brotherly love, offers rewards for suffering, thereby allevia- 
ting its pains, and what is of most importance, it uniforma- 
tizes the beliefs, acts, forms, ceremonies, emotions and 
sentiments among the different members of a community, 
thus creating a uniform and stable social environment. 

A celebrated passage from Bossuet will serve to partially 
illustrate this fact. 

"How grand, is the Roman Church, sustaining all the 
churches, bearing the burden of all who suffer, preserving the 
Unity. . . . Holy Roman Church, mother of churches 
and of all the faithful, the Church chosen by God to unite 
His children in the same faith and love, we will always hold 
to thy unity, etc." 1 Objective or social unity and perma- 
nency are the fanatic's prerequisites for subjective stability. 

The truth of this fact is further borne out by the history 
of the long and bitter warfare of the church against science, 
or as the churchmen preferred to call it, 'heresy.' Heresy 
is an unpardonable crime in the eyes of the fanatic. New 
thought, new changes upset him immediately and render him 
not unfrequently mentally unbalanced for life. If he does 
regain his equilibrium it is at the cost of greatest effort. 
This is the reason he endeavors to exterminate originality, 
his most dangerous enemy. Heresy, to him, is a gangrene 
which spreads farther and farther. He must either extirpate 
it or be killed by it, and instinctively he pursues the former 
course. 

Prof. James has given the name ' neophobia ' to this frame 
of mind. "The baiting of the Jews, the hunting of Albi- 



1 Murisier: op. cit., p. 106. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 221 

genses and Waldenses, the stoning of Quakers and ducking 
of Methodists, the murdering of Mormons, and the massa- 
cring of Armenians, express much rather that aboriginal 
human neophobia, that pugnacity of which we all share the 
vestiges, and that inborn hatred of the alien and of the ec- 
centric and non-conforming men as aliens, than they express 
the positive piety of the various perpetrators." 1 

Socrates, Bruno, and the host of other noble martyrs were 
from this point of view justly put to death. Indeed, this is 
the defence commonly offered by the Jews for the Crucifixion 
of Christ. 

But it should he remembered that this neophobia and in- 
born hatred of the alien and eccentric is not at any time 
equally strong in all individuals. Indeed, there are some 
who, as we have seen, have what might be called a neomania ; 
who greedily snatch up every new fad and idea, and are 
ever changing in their religious alliances. Again, there 
are others, broad and liberal minded, who are neither neo- 
phobiacs nor neomaniacs, but who calmly judge men and 
doctrines at what seems to them, at least, their true value. 
It is chiefly in fanatics that this neophobia is most strongly 
developed for reasons which we have already noted. 

The Christian Church, like all other organizations whose 
existence depend on uniformity and obedience, attempted to 
regulate and uniformatize the conduct of its adherents. A 
few centuries ago this mania was carried to a ridiculous ex- 
treme, and we have such absurdities as "The Beard from 
the Christian Point of View, ' ' a book written to instruct 
Christians how to wear their beards. The church has fre- 
quently excommunicated those who accepted her teachings 
but rejected her sacerdotalism and ritualism, and she has just 
as often been satisfied with a purely formal conformity — with 
a mere attitude or gesture. 2 

As an institution the Church is even more dependent on 
external conformity than acceptance of particular doctrines 
or dogmas, for no matter what men believe, so long as they 
outwardly conform to the rules and ceremonies of the Church 
they help to preserve its social unity and stability. The 
fanatic, who realizes this more clearly than others, always 
regards attempts to turn aside from established customs as a 
revolt against society and against God. Views which seem 

1 Varieties, etc., p. 338. 2 Murisier: op. cit., p. 111. 



222 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

to the ordinary man to be perfectly rational and harmless are 
offensive to him, if for no other reason than that they intro- 
duce newness and diversity in his environment. He becomes 
a persecutor for the same reason that the mystic becomes an 
ascetic. ''Persecution," writes Murisier, "with its many 
ways, coarse or refined, plays in the collective life the same 
role that asceticism plays in the individual life. Just as 
asceticism seeks to exclude from consciousness conflicting 
tendencies and annoying images, persecution seeks to ex- 
clude from society peculiar or private views and discordant 
whims." 1 

A brief sketch of the character and work of John Calvin, 
one of the great leaders of the Reformation, will serve as a 
concrete example of fanaticism. Although the son of a 
moderately wealthy and influential father, and independent 
at the age of thirteen, he never had the desire to seek those 
pleasures which are so attractive to a young man in his station 
of life. On the contrary, during his early years at Paris he 
was rigorously abstinent in his living and very zealous in his 
studies. He was a reformer in spirit before he was through 
with his Latin Grammar, and so out of sympathy with even 
the innocent frivolities of boyhood that his companions sur- 
named him the "Accusative Case," a very expressive and 
appropriate sobriquet which fitted him all during his life. 
He was possessed of a very clear and logical mind that could 
easily penetrate beneath the surface of things, and like many 
strong characters, had no patience with stupidity and could 
not brook difference of opinion. 

"A mind," writes Renan, "delicate and free from pas- 
sion, critical of itself, perceives the weak points in its own 
armor, and is constrained at times to embrace the views of 
adversaries. The man, on the other hand, who is passionate 
and absolute in his opinions, barely identifies his cause with 
that of God, and proceeds with the audacity which is the 
natural offspring of this assurance. The world belongs to 
him, and justly, for the world is only impelled forward by 
strong minds ; but delicacy of thought is denied to him ; he 
never sees the truth in its purity ; self-deceived, he dies 
without attaining to wisdom. . . . The mighty men of the 
world have been those who have never wavered nor stopped 
to doubt and reflect, but who have felt a cataleptic certainty 

1 Op. cit., p. 126. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 223 

that they were right and all opposed to them positively 
wrong. This severe inflexibility, which is the essential char- 
acteristic of the man of action, Calvin possessed in an emi- 
nent degree. I do not know that there could be found a 
more complete type of ambition, a man eager to make his 
ideas predominate because he believed them to be true. 
Heedless of riches, titles or honors, unostentatious, modest 
in his life, apparent humility, everything made subservient 
to the desire to form others in his own image. There is 
hardly any one, save Ignatius Loyola, who could dispute the 
palm with him in these terrible transports ; but Loyola added 
to them Spanish ardor and an enthusiasm of imagination 
which have a special beauty of their own ; he still contin- 
ued to be an old reader of the Amadis, pursuing, after the 
fashion of worldly chivalry, spiritual chivalry, whilst that 
Calvin possessed all the sternness of passion, without a 
spark of enthusiasm. One might say he was a sworn in- 
terpreter who arrogated to himself the divine right to define 
what was Christian or Anti-Christian. '" * Such a character 
must, as M. Renan proceeds to show, of necessity be intol- 
erant, and ofttimes seemingly arrogant. He revolted against 
the efforts of the Catholic Church to restrict the religious 
liberties of men, but when he came in power he granted 
them no greater freedom. "He believed otherwise than 
the Catholics, but he believed as absolutely as they," and 
in his proselyting methods he differed very little from them, 
and nothing, however cruel and atrocious, prevented him 
from endeavoring to obtain these results. 

" That violent zeal which urges the man of conviction to 
procure the salvation of souls by means of a fierce struggle, 
and without taking any account of liberty, shines forth 
through the whole of the correspondence of Calvin. Writing 
to the regent of England during the minority of Edward VI , 
he says: "From what I hear Monseigneur, you have two 
species of Mutineers who have risen against the King and 
State. One side are fantastical persons who, under the color 
of the Gospels, would put everything into confusion ; on the 
other hand, are persons stubbornly attached to the supersti- 
tions of the Antichrist of Rome. Both together richly de- 
serve to be repressed by the sword which has been committed 
to you, with the view that they attach themselves not only 

1 Leaders of Christian and Anti-Christian Thought, pp. 81-82. 



224 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

to the king, but also to God, who has placed him in the royal 
seat, and has committed to you the protection of His peo- 
ple as well as of His Majesty. ' ' 2 He holds up to him for a 
model, the holy King Josias, whom God extolled for " hav- 
ing abolished and harrowed out everything which served 
only to nourish superstition," and warns him against follow- 
ing the example of those kings who, ''having overthrown 
the idolaters, but not having completely eradicated them, ' ' 
are blamed for " not having levelled the temples and places 
of foolish devotion." 

In the same intolerant and cruel spirit he wrote to Mme. de 
Cany concerning some unknown person : ' i Knowing in part 
what manner of man he was, could T have had my way I 
would gladly have seen him rot in the ditch, and his coming 
delighted me as much as if he had cleft my heart with a 
dagger. ... Be assured, Madame, had he not got 
away so quickly, in the discharge of my duty, it would not 
have been my fault if he escaped the flames." In defence 
of his successful efforts to have Servetus put to death, — one 
of the blackest crimes in the history of religion, — he wrote a 
pamphlet entitled, "A defence of the orthodox faith, . . . 
in which it is proved that heretics may be rightly coerced by 
the sword. ' ' Three years after the execution of Gruet, he 
stigmatized him as " the adherent of an infected and worse 
than diabolical sect . . . belching out execrations that 
ought to make a man's hair stand on end ; infections stinking 
enough to poison a whole country, that all people of con- 
science ought to ask God 's pardon for the blasphemy that 
has been heaped on his name among them. ' ' 2 

Of Pighuis, a Papist who had written an elaborate treatise 
on Free Will and Predestination to which Calvin replied, he 
says, ' 1 Pighuis died a little after my book was published ; 
wherefore, not to insult a dead dog, I applied myself to other 
lucubrations. ' ' In his controversies with his former friend, 
Castellio, he is bitter and savage, and even stooped to charge 
that distinguished scholar with having stolen wood for his 
fire, which, in truth, he had picked up during the night from 
the banks of the Rhine. The same intolerant and abusive 
spirit pervades his controversies with Bolsec, Westphal, 
Heshusius, and the Favre family. It was absolutely impos- 

1 Leaders of Christian and Anti-Christiau Thought, pp. 84-85. 

2 Ibid., pp. 86-87. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 225 

sible for him to countenance opposition. " Dogs bark at me 
on all sides, ' ' he wrote of his adversaries, for whom he never 
had a kind word, and never entertained a charitable opinion. 
In this respect he closely resembled another of the world 's 
greatest fanatics, Mohammed, whose curse against his uncle 
and foe, Abu Lahab, is interesting in this connection. 

"In the name of God, merciful and gracious! 
Abu LahaVs two hands shall perish, and he shall perish! 
His wealth shall not avail him, nor that which he hath earned; 
He shall broil in a fire that flames, and his wife carrying faggots! 
On her neck a cord of palm fibres." 1 

In morals he was even more stern and exacting than in 
purely religious matters. Colaborating with Farel, who after 
much persuasion had prevailed upon him to settle in Geneva 
and help him in his religious work, he drew up a Confession 
of Faith in twenty-one articles, and submitted it to the 
Council of Two Hundred who ordered it to be printed, and 
proclaimed in the Cathedral Church of St. Peter's, as bind- 
ing on the whole body of citizens. Their homes were an- 
nually visited by inquisitors who questioned them closely as 
to their faith, their moral conduct, etc. Ministers were 
given the power to excommunicate, and all classes were se- 
verely rebuked for their petty vices and foibles. In this and 
in his Ordinances Ecclesiastiques de l'Eglise we see his great 
love for order, unity, consistency, and conservatism. "His 
whole character and mind were constructive and legislative." 

"A marvellous change in the course of a short time was 
wrought upon the outward aspect of Geneva. A gay and 
pleasure-loving people, devoted to music and dancing, the 
evening wine-shop, and card playing, found themselves sud- 
denly arrested in their usual pastimes. Not only were the 
darker vices of debauchery, which greatly prevailed, pun- 
ished by severe penalties, but the lighter follies and amuse- 
ments of society were laid under imperious ban. All holi- 
days were abolished, except Sunday ; the innocent gayeties 
of weddings, and the fashionable caprices of dress, were 
made subjects of legislation ; a bride was not to adorn her- 
self with floating tresses, and her welcome home was not to 
be noisy with feasting and revelry. The convent bells, 
which had rung their sweet chimes for ages across the blue 
waters of the Rhone and become associated with many even- 

x See P. De Lacy Johnston: Muhammad, p. 62. 
15 



226 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

ing memories of love and song, had been previously destroyed, 
and cast into cannon." Even the number of dishes for din- 
ner was fixed by law. " The young people think that I press 
them too hard," wrote Calvin, "but if the reins were not 
held with a strong hand their case would be more pitiable. 
We must secure their welfare, spite their distaste of it." 

In light of the above analysis of fanaticism we need hardly 
point out that Calvin was by these methods securing his own 
welfare more perhaps, than that of the Genevese. He re- 
volted against Catholicism, but in spirit and method he was 
always a true Catholic. In Geneva he established a civitas 
Dei, such as Augustine had long before dreamed of, and such 
as the .Roman Church had endeavored to establish. He re- 
constructed along old lines, and transplanted much Catholi- 
cism in Protestant soil. 

The following from his friend Beza gives us an idea of his 
prodigous activity. "During the week he preached every 
alternate, and lectured every third day; on Thursday he met 
with the presbytery, and on Friday attended the ordinary 
Scripture meeting called the « congregation, ' where he had 
his full share of the duty. ' ' Besides this he was engaged in 
writing his Commentaries, and kept up a very wide corre- 
spondence. An active and energetic man, sincere, serious, 
and God-fearing, he was, like a true fanatic, stern, unsym- 
pathetic, dogmatic, intolerant, and cruel. He lived in a 
troublous and unsettled age, it is true, but any other than a 
fanatic could have lived in it without causing nearly so much 
misery and strife. 

"An impression of majesty, and yet of sadness, must ever 
linger around the name of Calvin, " writes the Rev. Dr. 
Tulloch. " He was great, and we admire him. The world 
needed him, and we honor him ; but we cannot love him. 
He repels our affections while he extorts our admiration ; and 
while we recognize the worth, and the divine necessity of his 
life and work, we are thankful to survey them at a distance, 
and to believe that there are also other modes of divinity 
governing the world, and advancing the kingdom of right- 
eousness and truth.' ' 

Church Organizations. 

As soon as the religious leader or reformer has succeeded 
in subjugating or quieting his opponents and has gained a 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 227 

sufficiently large following, he organizes his forces, unifies 
and binds them together and to himself by means of a gov- 
ernment with its numerous laws, forms and officials. This 
he must do if he would have the results of his labors endure 
and increase. Without some form of organization, some 
creed or ceremony to act as an integrating principle, his fol- 
lowers must soon fall away and his work be forgotten. We 
have seen that Calvin was early engaged on his Ordinances 
Ecclesiastiques de L'Eglise. Moses drew up the religious 
and social laws for his people while yet in the wildnerness. 
Mohammed left his disciples and followers the Quran or 
Koran which is the basis of their political, social, and do- 
mestic institutions, as well as of their religious organizations ; 
the early Christians had their presbuteroi, episkopoi, diako- 
noi, and other functuaries ; Joseph Smith modelled his own 
church organization after this ; Mrs. Eddy and Alexander 
Dowie likewise have their own churches and ordinances, the 
Salvation Army is thoroughly organized ; in a word, every 
religion has its organization without which it could not long 
live. Religious institutions like their political analogues are 
the cohesive forces which hold individuals of like sentiments 
together. They are social bonds, and as such are perfectly 
normal and necessary products of the social consciousness. 
We cannot, with Prof. James, consider them abnormal or 
necessarily injurious to the religious spirit. Like all things 
normal they may be overdeveloped and become degenerate, 
but until then they serve a normal function and satisfy nor- 
mal needs and desires. 

4 ' In critically judging of the value of religious phenom- 
ena," writes Prof. James, "it is important to insist on the 
distinction between religion as an individual personal func- 
tion, and religion as an institutional, corporate or tribal 
product. ... A survey of history shows us that, as a rule, 
religious geniuses attract disciples, and produce groups of 
sympathizers. When these groups get strong enough to 
' organize ' themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions 
with corporate ambitions of their own. The spirit of poli- 
tics and the lust of dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and 
to contaminate the originally innocent thing ; so that when 
we hear the word 'religion' nowadays, we think inevitably 
of some ' church ' or other ; and to some persons the word 
1 church' suggests so much hypocrisy and tyranny and mean- 
ness and tenacity of superstition that in a wholesale undis- 



228 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

cerning way they glory in saying that they are ' down ' on 
religion altogether. Even we who belong to churches do 
not exempt other churches than our own from the general 
condemnation. ' ' 1 

A little further on, speaking of Geo. Fox's religious ex- 
periences, which he calls 'original,' Prof. James says: "A 
genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to 
be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a 
mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious 
enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and 
labelled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough 
to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an othodoxy; 
and when a religion has become an othodoxy, its day of in- 
wardness is over ; the spring is dry; the faithful live at sec- 
ond hand exclusively, and stone the prophets in their turn. 
The new church, in spite of whatever human goodness it 
may foster, can henceforth be counted as a staunch ally 
in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious spirit, 
and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which 
in purer days it drew its own supply of inspiration. Unless, 
indeed, by adopting new movements of the spirit it can make 
capital out of them and use them for its selfish corporate de- 
signs ! Of protective action of this political sort, promptly 
or tardily decided on, the dealings of the Roman ecclesiasti- 
cism with many individual saints and prophets yield exam- 
ples enough for our instruction. " 2 

This distinction between the personal and institutional 
religion while necessary for logical clearness is apt to distort 
the truth when pressed too far. According to our author it 
would seem that religions are the products of a few gifted 
individuals who have succeeded in winning a large and per- 
manent following, a theory which has already been refuted 
by sociology and comparative philology. 2 

" For ethnology," writes Dr. Ths. Achelis, following Post, 
Brinton, and Durkheim, ''religion, mythology, law, custom, 
art, are no inventions of individuals, no products of great 
personalities, but socio-psychical phenomena in the organic 
development of the race. In origin and essence, religion is 
a social function, and not something left to the pleasure of 
the individuals as it seems so to be." 



1 Varieties, etc., pp. 334-5. • 2 Ibid., p. 337. 

3 See Max Miiller : Anthropological Religion. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 229 

"The view of the last century," continues Dr. Achelis, 
" sought the ultimate source of all mental life in the indi- 
vidual alone, and therefore ascribed all such phenomena as 
religion, law, custom, state, art, ultimately to personal initia- 
tive. This view must be regarded to-day as antiquated, 
inasmuch as it contradicts experience and is unable to 
explain the facts. These presuppositions, says the acute 
Wundt, spring from a conception of reality which transforms 
the elements of phenomena assumed by metaphysics into the 
actual starting points of these same phenomena. That iso- 
lated individual who is represented as standing at the begin- 
ning of every line of social development, is to be found 
nowhere in experience. Experience shows the union of indi- 
viduals to be the condition of physical development, and in 
a still higher degree, an indispensable factor of mental life. 
Language, customs, religious conceptions, — the nearer we 
approach to their beginnings the less can we conceive of 
them as the invention of individuals. They are products in 
which not only many have had a hand, but which could not 
come about at all apart from the conditions of a unity which 
embraced every individual life." 1 "Religion," says Muri- 
sier, who has made a careful study of religion both from the 
individual and social point of view, « ' becomes a social phe- 
nomenon because the human person is relative to a collec- 
tivity, a member of a group, and consequently he feels, 
thinks, and acts under the dominating idea of that group 
which really integrates itself with all that constitutes him." 2 
That is to say, religion is a product of an individual or indi- 
viduals who are themselves products of society, and that is 
the reason why the doctrine of the religious genius ' ' proves 
contagious enough to triumph over persecutions. ' ' Were 
the doctrine not in harmony with the conscious and sub-con- 
scious thoughts and feelings of the group it would win no 
adherents and die a speedy death. Only those prophets are 
stoned whose teachings are not agreeable to the group and 
therefore not contagious. 

" If atheism could make itself acceptable to crowds, " says 
Le Bon, 4 1 it would have all the intolerant ardor of a reli- 
gious sentiment, and in its exterior forms would soon become 
a cult. ' ' But the reason why atheism does not make itself 

1 Ethnology and the Science of Religion, International Quarterly, 
Dec, 1902. 
2 Les Maladies du Sentiment Religieuse, p. 95. 



230 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

acceptable to crowds is evidently because they are religious 
and not atheistic. 

The distinction between " religion as an individual per- 
sonal function, and religion as an institutional corporate or 
tribal product is thus seen to be rather a superficial one, 
and less important than James would have us believe. We 
can say with equal truth, that religion is an individual prod- 
uct, and that it is a social product. It depends wholly on 
our understanding of the two terms. 

Man is doubtless more than a mere link in a chain ; a ceil 
in the body, or a drop in the ocean ; he possesses a will and 
a certain amount of individuality . But his will, if it is to 
function normally, must be subjected to other wills. The 
normal man lives in harmony and peace with his environment, 
and his individuality if it is to be at all fruitful must be 
legitimate, that is, it must be a product of the environment 
in which it is born. Man is an individual and a socius con- 
comitantly and covariantly, and we cannot say with any 
certainty this is a product of his individuality and that a 
product of his milieu. The two are interwoven and insep- 
arable. 

It is not true, furthermore, " that the faithful live at second 
hand exclusively, and stone the prophets in their turn." 
Strictly speaking there is no second-hand religion any more 
than there is second-hand life. The healthy religious indi- 
vidual does not rely solely and wholly upon his leader to 
bring him into the Kingdom of Heaven ; he works out his 
own salvation, as the data gathered by Drs. Leuba, Star- 
buck, Coe, Burnham, and others abundantly show. " Reli- 
gion," says Brinton, "does not begin from any external 
pressure, no matter how strong this may be. If it has any 
vitality ; if it is anything more than the barrenest ceremonial, 
it must start within, from the soul itself. This it did in pri- 
mordial ages in all tribes of men." 1 Of course the religious 
consciousness of one may be at a much lower level than that 
of another, but however much or little he may have, it is 
his and first hand. As a socius he reflects in his own small 
and imperfect way the religious consciousness of his race 
and time, and in so doing helps to keep it alive and to 
develop or degenerate it. In other words, religion is a 
product of individual and social experiences, and only in 

1 "Religion of Primitive Peoples," p. 40. 



The Volitional Element in. Religion. 231 

abnormal individuals, such as mystics and fanatics, is one or 
the other of its aspects completely submerged. In the light 
of this it becomes more clearly evident why organizations 
and churches "attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious 
spirit. ' ' The individual is a social being, and society, as is 
well known, is an extremely conservative body. The life 
of the individuals who compose it depends upon its cohesion 
and unity. They are therefore justly suspicious of any and 
every new idea, every new change suggested which has 
within it the slightest possibility of destroying their social 
stability, their union, their peace and happiness. 

Even if it be true, as Sidis maintains, that " the cultivated, 
civilized individual is an automaton, a mere puppet,' ' he is 
so because any other specie ' homo ' would be very danger- 
ous to the community. Nor are these individuals in any 
sense abnormal ; they are the very salt of the earth, the 
individuals without whom the world 's work could not be 
done, and without whom religion and art and science and 
literature and government and commerce could never be. 
Their religious experiences are not second-hand and of no 
account simply because they are not as extravagant and 
absurd as those which form the material of Prof. James's 
study. 

However much we may admire and revere the religious 
leaders whose experiences Prof. James has described, we can- 
not blind ourselves to the fact that they were abnormal, call it 
sub or supernormal, as you please. An analysis of their relig- 
ious experiences cannot give us a true picture of religion as it 
lives and moves and has its being in the hearts and minds of 
the countless millions of normal, healthy-minded men, and 
of the two we cannot help believing that the latter is by far 
the most important, and the truer and more useful. 

It is almost absurd to maintain that institutional religion 
is not as genuine and valuable as the so-called purely indi- 
vidual religion. The two are inseparable. Ecclesiastical in- 
stitutions, as Spencer indicates, by conserving beliefs, senti- 
ments and rites which were evolved during earlier stages of 
society, by offering resistance to too rapid change, by produ- 
cing uniformity thereby conducing to cohesion, conserve the 
social aggregate, link the past to the present and perform a 
most impotant function for the life of the race. Even the 
Roman Catholic Church, corrupt as it was, still remained ' ' a 
highly conservative machinery of social and national exist- 



232 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

ence." " Intolerable in its unspirituality and oppressive- 
ness," writes Tulloch, "it operated as a vast political and 
social agency, touching life everywhere, and binding it to- 
gether in all its relations." 1 But, as has been said before, 
every function may be abused, and the one of which we 
are treating is no exception to the rule. The excesses of 
the Roman Church necessitated the rise of Protestantism, 
just as centuries before the excesses of the Jewish polity 
necessitated the rise of Christianity. Institutions are living 
things which are born, ripen and decay ; and from their 
ruins new and better institutions spring up, which in their 
turn run through the same course and give rise to still bet- 
ter institutions, and so it shall continue to the end of time. 
Such is the natural and normal course of events, but unfor- 
tunately we find too often in history that institutions have 
gained such a firm hold on the people that it is for a long 
time impossible for them to free themselves from their sti- 
fling tentacles. Protestantisms arise only after incalculable 
injury has been done. 

Says Murisier, ' « By the creation of new environments re- 
ligion is able to favor the diffusion of the most refined moral 
sentiments, and to become one of the essential factors of prog- 
ress. But by the maintenance of superannuated beliefs and 
arbitrary practices, by dogmatism, by insisting that truth is 
enclosed in certain definite formulas, and finally by the resis- 
tance which it offers to all intellectual or moral innovation 
it becomes a truly formidable cause of stagnation and de- 
cay. ' ' 2 We see this decayed state of religion and civilization 
in ancient Mexico with its more than forty thousand temples 
and million priests ; in Peru where there was one priest for 
every ten laymen, in Ancient Abyssinia, and in the present 
priest-ridden Ilussia. A certain amount of mental fixity or 
conservatism is, as we have seen absolutely necessary, but 
our mental furniture, to use the figure of Le Conte again, 
should not be so firmly screwed to the mental floor as to 
render it impossible to readjust the furniture without tearing 
up the whole mental flooring. 

Speaking symbolically of religious institutions Carlyle says : 
4 ' Church clothes are, in our vocabulary, the Forms, the Ves- 
tures, under which men have at various periods embodied 

1 Leaders of the Reformation, Edin., 1859. p 169. 

2 Les Maladies du Sentiment Religieuse, p. 146. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 233 

and represented for themselves the Religious Principle ; that 
is to say, invested the Divine Idea of the World with a sen- 
sible, and practically active Body, so that it might dwell 
among them as a living and life-giving Word. These are 
unspeakably the most important of all the vestures and garni- 
tures of Human Existence. 

" They are first spun and woven, I may say by that Wonder 
of Wonders, Society; for it is still only when ' two or three 
are gathered together ' that Religion, spiritually existent, and 
indeed indestructible, however latent, in each, first out- 
wardly manifests itself and seeks to be embodied in a visible 
Communion and Church Militant. ' ' The Church visible is 
certainly of vital importance and has its place beside the 
Church invisible. The two are mutually related and interde- 
pendent. "As in the human constitution, body and soul are 
intended to exert a mutual influence, each working health- 
fully and helpfully upon the other, — the body giving utter- 
ance and expression to the soul and carrying out its purposes 
and desires, and the soul animating the body and informing 
it with grace and beauty, — so also is the intent in all reli- 
gion. All form is to the end of spiritual life and vigor, and 
spiritual life is in order to outward influence and fruitful- 
ness." 1 But when the form hardens and crushes out the 
vigor and life of the soul it becomes pathological. 

Asceticism and Monasticism. 

The majority of men are normally two-world creatures, 
and the relationship they maintain between the two, that is, 
the extent to which the other world shapes their lives and 
conduct in this, the relative value they attach to each, marks 
the degree of their healthy-mindedness. It would not be 
difficult to range the different types of men along this two- 
world scale, at one end of which we should have to place the 
extreme other-worldists, at the other end the sensuous epi- 
cureans and charlatans, all of whose thoughts, ambitions, 
and ideals centre about their bodily selves, and between 
them, the normal two-worlded men in whose lives both spir- 
itual and material interests are properly blended and con- 
trolled. We are here interested, however, only with those 
individuals who are other-worldly iiberhaupt, and these we 
may divide into four groups. 

1 Herrick : Some Heretics of Yesterday. 



234 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

1. Those who look at the world through smoked specta- 
cles, as it were, and consequently see everything gray and 
gloomy. Men about them stubbornly persist in being wicked, 
and the Evil One is still their supreme master. Conditions, 
on the whole, are deplorable and discouraging, but these 
pessimists are not passive and resigned. On the contrary, 
they are extremely active, and of great courage. They con- 
stantly wage war with almost fanatic zeal against the devil 
and his host of agents, and endeavor to reclaim the world, 
as far as it is possible, for their God. They are ascetics, per- 
haps constitutionally, perhaps because of their views of life, 
and also because their world-rescuing task requires an ascetic 
life, but they are always citizens of the world, wicked as it 
is. They are certain that the rule of the Demiurge is only 
a temporary one, that when the proper time and conditions 
come, he will be deposed, and God Himself will rule over 
His people. It is this theocratic state, this kingdom of heaven 
on earth that they endeavor to realize. In this category we 
may place the Jewish prophets, the Apostles, the Puritans, 
many missionaries and revivalists, the old Methodists, and 
possibly not a few modern ones. However, it should be 
said that in grouping these classes of men under one cate- 
gory it is by no means intended to imply that they are all 
equally pessimistic or ascetic, or that they are that and noth- 
ing more, but merely that, from the present point of view, 
they belong more or less to the general type we have at- 
tempted to describe. And this statement applies to all 
cases which shall be used as illustrations. 

2. There are those who ignore this world entirely; they 
simply refuse to look at it or be a part of it. It has no value 
for them. Relatives, friends, honor, riches, in short all 
things that normal men hold dear are as nothing to them. 
They make of this life a mere preparation for death which is 
to usher them into a new and infinitely better world. But 
with respect to this latter world they are extremely optimis- 
tic, and inasmuch as they live in it constantly in their 
thoughts ; their lives, though other-worldly and abnormal 
from our point of view, are subjectively serene and happy. 
It is not surprising, therefore, to read so frequently of monks 
who spent happy lives in their cells, or rather in the para- 
dises which their fancy created, and « ' filled the entire world 
with their songs of joy, " to quote St. Anselm ; for they who 
believed themselves citizens of the world to come could well 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 235 

afford to ignore all earthly goods and joys. " I desire noth- 
ing more, 7 ' declared Marie Alacoque, to quote only one of 
the many ascetics and anchorites belonging *to this class, 
" than to be blind and ignorant as regards human affairs, in 
order perfectly to learn the lesson I so much need, that a 
good nun must leave all to find God, be ignorant of all else 
to know Him, forget all else to possess Him, do and suffer 
all in order to learn to love Him. " 

3. There are individuals who are pessimistic or indiffer- 
ent with regard to this life, and indifferent, or at least not 
optimistic with regard to the hereafter. Both worlds are of 
small or doubtful value. To this class belong the Cynic and 
Stoic sects of the decadent Greek and Roman periods, and 
the Buddhists, who are constantly reminded that, « 4 all is 
transitory; all is misery; all is void; all is without sub- 
stance," who dread transmigration, and whose supremest 
desire is annihilation, — Nirvana. Little wonder that, al- 
though they number 300,000,000 they allow themselves to 
be ruled over by a mere handful of English officials and sol- 
diers, that they are nonchalant and non-resistive. 

4. Lastly, there are those who approach and enter the 
condition known as melancholia. To this class belong the 
large number of unhappy and pessimistic atheists and 
agnostics whose earthly lives are canopied o'er with leaden 
skies and who have no hope whatever of a future life. As 
one of them expressed it : " The world is a human prison- 
cell, where hope flits to and fro, like a poor bat, beating in 
aimless flight the walls with timid wings, striking its little 
head against the moldering roof." And another: "We 
have no chapel where we can kneel down, no more faith to 
sustain us, no more God to whom we can address our pray- 
ers. Our hearts are empty, our souls are without an ideal 
and without hope." The other world is non-existent for 
them, and this one is unbearable. 

Such are the four types of other-worldists or pessimists, 
and all except the first are, according to our criterion, 
pathological. 

They give rise to two distinct kinds of asceticism: the 
first to a normal, active asceticism whose idea is to labor for 
the betterment and salvation of the human race ; to trans- 
form the world into a city of God ; and the others to a pas- 
sive, subjective, corrosive asceticism which accomplishes 
nothing good and ends in madness. "What a chasm," 



236 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

says Harnack, "divides the silent anchorite of the desert, 
who for a lifetime has looked no man in the face, from the 
monk who imposed his commands upon a world." 1 

" The ascetic instinct," writes Baring-Gould, "is inti- 
mately united to the religious instinct. There is scarcely a re- 
ligion of ancient or modem times, Protestantism excepted, that 
does not recognize asceticism as an element of its system. . . 
The principle of asceticism is abstinence from lawful pleas- 
ures, the subordination of certain faculties to others, and the 
restraint of certain propensities. . . . Buddha taught his 
disciples a religion of abstinence. . . . Brahmanism has also 
its order of ascetics. From the earliest Vaidic age, Hindoo 
thought turned to self-immolation, and annihilation of the car- 
nal desires. Mohammedanism has its fakirs, subduing the flesh 
by their austerities, and developing the spirit by their con- 
templations and prayers. Fasting and self-denial were ob- 
servances required of the Greeks, who desired initiation into 
the Mysteries. Abstinence from food, chastity, and hard 
couches, prepared the neophyte, who broke his fast on the 
third or fourth day only on consecrated food. The scourge 
was used before the altars of Artemis, and over the tomb of 
Pelops. 

The Egyptian priests passed their novitiate in the deserts, 
and when not engaged in their religious functions were sup- 
posed to spend their time in caves. They renounced all 
commerce with the world, and lived in contemplation, tem- 
perance, and frugality, and in absolute poverty. . . . The 
Jews also had their fasts, . . . and on special occasions gave 
themselves up to prolonged fasts and mortifications. . . . 

The races of the new world have also an instinctive regard 
for self-denial and fasting. . . . The wrath of the gods is 
appeased, and they are made more disposed to listen to 
prayer, when man fasts. The Peruvians were wont to fast 
before sacrificing to the gods, and to bind themselves by 
vows of chastity and abstinence from nourishing foods. 
Fasting and mortifications of the flesh were common among 
the Mexicans. The savages of the American continent fas- 
ted to obtain ecstatic relation with their guardian spirits ; 
the Aztecs denied themselves food, tortured themselves with 
deprivation of sleep, and preserved chastity, in order that 
they might by suffering purify their consciences. They ate 

1 Harnack : Monasticism and Confessions of St. Augustine, p. 12. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 237 

but once a day, and refrained from stimulating drinks 
and strong diet. Fasts lasted for three, four, five, twenty, 
forty, sixty, and a hundred and sixty days, and even some- 
times for four consecutive years. There were fasts for the 
whole nation, family fasts, and fasts for the individual. 
Numerous congregations of monks, like the Jewish schools 
of the prophets and the religious orders of Buddhism, were 
to be found dotted over the country under vows of perpetual 
celibacy. Parents dedicated their children to the cloister from 
infancy . . . There were ascetic orders for old men, and nun- 
neries for widows devoted to the worship of Centeotl among 
the Totomacs, monastic orders among the Toltecs dedicated 
to the service of Quetzalcoatl, and others among the Aztecs 
consecrated to Tezcatlipoca. " This type of asceticism which 
compels its disciples to scourge and lacerate themselves, 
which drives them into deserts, marshes, caves, on pillar- 
tops, into narrow cells, or worse still into the unhealthy 
ooze of their morbid souls is pathological. On the other 
hand, that type of asceticism of which we have many exam- 
ples in early Christianity and later in Western Monasticism 
and which impels its disciples to enter the maelstrom of life 
and bids them to bend every energy to purify and permeate 
it with the true religious spirit, which pulsates with vigor- 
ous life, loves work and especially work in behalf of others 
must be considered normal. It gives birth to great religious 
leaders and reformers, and plays a large role in shaping the 
course of civilization and moulding the destinies of nations. 
Ascetics of this type practise renunciation both with a view 
to spiritual perfection, and in order that they may give their 
undivided thoughts and energies to the service of God and 
their fellow beings. Like scientists, philosophers, artists, 
and philanthropists they sacrifice their lower propensities to 
higher and more altruistic ideals. But these ascetics, it 
should be said, constitute the small minority, they are the 
few elect who draw up rules and govern, they are the relig- 
ous commanders and generals; the others are the religious 
soldiers who are ordered to obey blindly and unreasoningly. 
But unlike the obedience of the military soldier which co- 
exists with a certain amount of legitimate pride, that of the 
religious soldier is based upon abject humility. 1 " There are 
actually two churches in the (Roman Catholic) church ; ' ' 

1 See Lecky : Hist, of European Morals, Vol. 2, pp. 198-199. 



238 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

writes Sabatier, "the one teaching and governing, the other 
taught and governed; the one active; the other passive." 1 
And the same is true of all religions, more or less. 

The origins of asceticism are also many and different : 

1. Among primitive peoples its origin was, perhaps, purely 
accidental. If the struggle for existence was as severe as 
evolutionists depict it then there must have been many fam- 
ines which lowered the vitality of the people and reduced 
them to the trance condition in which they saw visions and 
dreamed dreams. Once this mystic and rather pleasant con- 
dition was experienced, it is conceivable that many individ- 
uals, especially those of a neurotic temperament, would 
endeavor to reproduce it artificially, both for its own sake and 
for the influence it gave them over their more normal neigh- 
bors, for they were soon regarded as magicians, soothsayers, 
medicine-men, and priests. To this category belong the 
American Indian medicine-men and priests, the Yogins, the 
Dervishes, and the Mohammedan Fakirs. 

2. Among higher races the pessimistic-ascetic attitude 
toward life is assumed when the people have drained the 
cup of pleasure to its dregs ; gorged themselves with all the 
legitimate and illegitimate joys of life, and found to their 
sorrow and disgust that all is vanity of vanities. Their eyes 
are now open, and they see how grievously they erred in 
overestimating the value of this world, and underestimating 
that of the next. The classic example of this is to be found, 
of course, in Ecclesiastes. After a long inventory of all his 
works and possessions and enjoyments, Solomon tells us : 
' ' Then I looked on all the works that my hands had 
wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do ; and, 
behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was 

no profit under the sun Therefore I hated life, 

because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous 
unto me; for all is vanity and vexation of the spirit.' ' 
Buddha Gotama came to the same conclusion after somewhat 
similar experiences. What is true of individuals is largely 
true of races. It was in the dying days of Egypt, Judea, 
Greece, and Rome, when their glorious courses had been run 
and their energies dissipated, when repentant disgust which 
"deep weariness and sated lust" breed in men and make 
of life a hell had set in, that the various ascetic sects such as 

1 Religions of Authority, p. 18. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 239 

the Essenes, Cynics, Stoics, Gnostics, Manicheans, Docetae, 
Montanists, and others were born and developed. And it 
was, as we should expect, the most learned and licentious 
centres of these lands that produced the most numerous 
ascetics, just as the cultivated cities of France and Germany 
to-day are breeding centres of pessimism and despair, vices 
and suicides. Truly, the race is but a pendulum which 
slowly swings between a smile and a tear. But for the asce- 
tic this world is always a vale of tears, and his duty, accord- 
ing to St. Jerome, is to weep — always weep ! 

3. Another cause of asceticism among advanced peoples 
was their dualistic philosophy, which also has been well-nigh 
universal until quite recent times, as witness the belief in 
Ormazds and Ahrimans, Irans and Turans, eudaimonai and 
kakodamonia, gods and devils, in good and evil forces in 
nature and in man, and the exaggerated difference the va- 
rious races have discerned between the spiritual and material. 
The world was considered the work of the Evil One, and 
all that was material was vile and vicious. It was for this 
reason that so many ascetics yearned to escape from the 
world, and to free their souls by fastings and flagellations 
from the sinful and hated bodies which imprisoned them. 
' « Our wretched and weak human flesh, ' ' wrote Brother 
Giles, « ' is like the pig, that ever delighteth to wallow and 
befoul itself in the mud, deeming the mud its greatest de- 
light. Our flesh is the devil's knight; for it resists and 
fights against all those things that are of God for our sal- 
vation." Likewise Origen : "All the evil that reigns in 
the body is due to the five senses." And A Kempis : "The 
devil sleepeth not, neither is the flesh yet dead : Therefore 
cease not to prepare thyself for the battle." 

Here we have not a mere indifference, nor an irrational 
refusal to take this world into consideration ; not a light and 
happy world-flight, but a conscious determination reached by 
a comparison of this world with the other world, in which 
comparison this world sorely suffers. It is foul and sinful 
to the last degree, and the duty of every one is to avoid, no 
matter how painful the attempt may be, its contaminating 
touch. To understand the origin of such dualistic philosophy 
we should have to know much more fully than we do at 
present the history of the experiences of the various races, 
the story of their struggle for survival, the nature of their 
physical and social environments, etc. But once this mor- 



240 Pathological Aspects of Religions, 

bid attitude toward the world is assumed we may expect to 
find all sorts of morbid phenomena following as natural con- 
sequences. One of these, which strangely enough has been 
overlooked by students of religion is peccatiphobia, or the 
morbid fear of sinning, a fear which plays a large role in 
almost all religions. 

The following extract from the Manual of St. John of the 
Cross, a Spanish mystic and ascetic of the 16th century, 
gives an excellent portrayal of the ascetic's attitude towards 
natural human desires, the world in general, and his morbid 
fear of committing a sin. 

44 First of all, carefully excite in yourself an habitual affec- 
tionate will in all things to imitate Jesus Christ. If any- 
thing agreeable offers itself to your senses, yet does not at 
the same time tend purely to the honor and glory of God, re- 
nounce it, and separate yourself from it for the love of 
Christ, who all his life long had no other taste or wish than 
to do the will of his Father, whom he called his meat and 
nourishment. For example, you take satisfaction in hearing 
of things in which the glory of God bears no part. DeDy 
yourself this satisfaction, mortify your wish to listen. You 
take pleasure in seeing objects which do not raise your mind 
to God ; refuse yourself this pleasure, and turn away your 
eyes. The same with conversations and all other things. 
Act similarly, so far as you are able, with all the operations 
of the senses, striving to make yourself free from their 
yokes. ' ' 

The radical remedy lies in the mortification of the four 
great natural passions, joy, hope, fear, and grief. To con- 
tinue the quotation : 

4 4 Let your soul therefore turn always : 

44 Not to what is most easy, but to what is hardest ; 

44 Not to what tastes best, but to what is most distasteful ; 

44 Not to what most pleases, but to what disgusts ; 

44 Not to matter of consolation, but to matter for desolation 
rather ; 

4 4 Not to rest, but to labor ; 

44 Not to desire the more, but the less ; 

44 Not to aspire to what is highest and most precious, but 
to what is lowest and most contemptible ; 

44 Not to will anything, but to will nothing ; 

44 Not to seek the best in everything, but to seek the worst, 
so that you may enter for the love of Christ into a complete 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 241 

destitution, a perfect poverty of spirit, and an absolute re- 
nunciation of everything in this world. 

4 ' Embrace these practices with all the energy of your soul, 
and you will find in a short time great delights and unspeak- 
able consolations. 

4 ' Despise yourself, and wish that others should despise 
you. 

4 ' Speak to your own disadvantage, and desire others to do 
the same ; 

44 Conceive a low opinion of yourself, and find it good 
when others hold the same ; 

44 To enjoy the taste of all things, have no taste for any- 
thing. 

44 To know all things, learn to know nothing. 

44 To possess all things, resolve to possess nothing. 

44 To be all things, be willing to be nothing. 

44 To get to where you have no taste for anything, go 
through whatever experiences you have no taste for. 

4 4 To learn to know nothing, go whither you are ignorant. 

4 4 To reach what you possess not, go whithersoever you 
own nothing. 

4 4 To be what you are not, experience what you are not. ' ' * 

We should search in vain for a better and clearer exposi- 
tion of the morbid ascetic's inner consciousness than is 
afforded by these harsh and curious precepts. They indicate 
first, his morbidly cruel conception of God, or shall we say 
that such ascetics worship not a God, but a most malignant 
demon? Second, they indicate that the ascetic's highest 
ideal is to become non-human and in-human, i. e., other- 
worldly. Every human quality and attribute is to be extir- 
pated, so to speak, every human desire quelled, until the 
ascetic becomes what he was not, and what no normal human 
being ever was. Third, they indicate that ascetics of this 
type are extremely selfish, cruel, and even immoral. The 
salvation of his own soul is the ascetic's all-engrossing 
thought, and although he macerates himself and suffers un- 
told agony, it is for the purpose of obtaining 4 4 great delights 
and unspeakable consolations, ' ' and to win the favor of his 
cruel God. To obtain these, every obstacle is to be over- 
come, every tie broken, and every means, even murder, is 

1 St. Jean de la Croix, Vieet Oeuvres, Paris, 1893. Quoted by James: 
Varieties of Religious Experiences, p. 305. 

16 



242 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

justified. "A saint named Boniface struck dead a man who 
went about with an ape and a cymbal, because he had (ap- 
parently quite unintentionally) disturbed him at his prayers. ' n 

" To break by his ingratitude the heart of the mother who 
had borne him," writes Lecky, " to persuade the wife who 
adored him that it was her duty to separate from him for- 
ever, to abandon his children, uncared for and beggars, to 
the mercy of the world, was regarded by the true hermit as 
the most acceptable offering he could make to his God. His 
business was to save his own soul. The serenity of his de- 
votion would be impaired by the discharge of the simplest 
duties to his family. ' ' 2 The last argument which St. Jerome 
employs in his frantic effort to persuade Heliodorus to leave 
his family and become a hermit is, * ' The enemy (the natu- 
ral human interests) brandishes a sword to slay me. Shall I 
think of a mother's tears? " 3 

Mr. Lecky cites many examples of the cruelty and ingrati- 
itude of monks to their parents. The following are a few of 
them. "St. Poemen and his six brothers had all deserted 
their mother to cultivate the perfections of an ascetic life. 
But ingratitude can seldom quench the love of a mother's 
heart, and the old woman, now bent by infirmities, went 
alone into the Egyptian desert to see once more the children 
she had so dearly loved. She caught sight of them as they 
were about leaving their cell for the church, but they imme- 
diately ran back into the cell, and before her tottering steps 
could reach it, one of her sons rushed forward and flung the 
door to in her face. She remained outside weeping bitterly. 
St. Poemen then, coming to the door, but without opening 
it, said, ' Why do you, who are already stricken with age, 
pour forth such cries and lamentations ? ' But she, recogni- 
zing the voice of her son, answered, « It is because I long to 
see you, my sons. What harm could it do you that I 
should see you ? Am I not your mother ? Did I not give 
you suck ? I am now an old and wrinkled woman, and my 
heart is troubled at the sound of your voices. ' The saintly 
brothers however, refused to open their door. They told 
their mother that she would see them after death : and the 
biographer says she at last went away contented with the 
prospect. ' ' 4 



1 Lecky: Hist, of European Morals, Vol. 2, p. 13,3. 

2 Ibid., p. 133. 3 Ibid., p. 143. * Ibid, pp. 137-8. 



The Volitional Element in Religion, 243 

1 i Evagrius, when a hermit in the desert, received after a 
long interval, letters from his father and mother. He could 
not bear that the equable tenor of his thoughts should be 
disturbed by the recollection of those who loved him, so 
he cast the letters unread into the fire." 1 

St. Simeon Stylites "had been passionately loved by his 
parents, and, if we may believe his eulogist and biographer, 
he began his saintly career by breaking the heart of his 
father who died of grief at his flight. His mother, however, 
lingered on. Twenty-seven years after his disappearance, 
at a period when his austerities had made him famous, she 
heard for the first time where he was, and hastened to visit 
him. But all her labor was in vain. No woman was admit- 
ted within the precincts of his dwelling, and he refused to 
admit her even to look upon his face. Her entreaties and 
tears were mingled with words of bitter and eloquent re- 
proach. ' My son,' she is represented as having said, 'Why 
have you done this ? I bore you in my womb, and you have 
wrung my soul with grief. I gave you milk from my breast, 
you have filled my eyes with tears. For the kisses I gave you, 
you have given me the anguish of a broken heart ; for all that 
I have done and suffered for you, you have repaid me with 
the most bitter wrongs.' At last the saint sent a message to 
tell her that she would soon see him. Three days and three 
nights she had wept and entreated in vain, and now, ex- 
hausted with grief and age and privation, she sank feebly to 
the ground and breathed her last sigh before that inhospita- 
ble door. Then for the first time the saint, accompanied by 
his followers, came out. He shed some pious tears over the 
corpse of his murdered mother, and offered up a prayer 
consigning her soul to heaven. Perhaps it was but fancy, 
perhaps life was not yet wholly extinct, perhaps the story is 
but the invention of the biographer ; but a faint motion — 
which appears to have been regarded as miraculous — is said 
to have passed over her prostrate form. Simeon once more 
commended her soul to heaven, and then, amid the admiring 
murmurs of his disciples, the saintly matricide returned to 
his devotions.' ' 

There are further accounts of fathers looking with com- 
placency on the sufferings of their only sons, and even 
sacrificing them at the commands of the abbots; of mothers 

1 IMd. i p. 133. 



244 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

deserting their children, and listening with dry eyes to 
their entreaties, but space does not permit quoting them. 

4. The God of these ascetics is manifestly not a benevo- 
lent and loving Father, but rather an angry Master, a terri- 
ble, though perhaps, a just Hater and Avenger. He rejoices 
not in the good fortunes of men, but in their misfortunes ; 
not health, comfort, happiness, but their opposites — disease, 
misery, poverty, and despair, — these gratify Him most. 
Nothing pleases Him more, according to their belief, than 
the painful sufferings and martyrdoms of His most loving 
and innocent children. Self -appreciation, nay even self- 
respect of the most normal sort is extremely odious to Him. 
Hegel grievously erred when he declared that man cannot 
possibly think too highly of himself ; on the contrary he can- 
not possibly think too lowly and meanly of himself. Let 
him not seek after pleasure-giving things which were created 
by the Demiurge to lure him to sin, nor after self-expansion 
and expression ; let him not hearken to the command of 
Nature to be just to himself and live the largest and fullest 
life possible, but let him rather despise Nature, withdraw 
from the world and its snares, i. e., everything of any human 
worth, and seek pain, renounce and abase himself, and crush 
his will to live, if he would win the favor of God, and merit 
the blessings of the world to come. For no man, they be- 
lieved, could enjoy both worlds ; he must choose one or the 
other, and just in proportion as he renounced this would he 
possess the other. As Margaret Peters, a mad mystic and 
ascetic of the 19th century, declared: "It gives joy to all 

the host of heaven when we suffer to the end The 

greater the humiliation and shame we undergo, and have to 
endure from our enemies here below, the more unspeakable 
our glorification in heaven. " 1 

" In hope to merit heaven,' 11 these ascetics 
Were (literally) making earth a hell. 11 

The following are abbreviated accounts of a few such 
ascetics taken from the first two volumes of Baring-Gould's 
"Lives of the Saints" entitled January and February. 
Countless others equally abnormal can be found in the other 
volumes of the same work and in the sixty odd volumes of 
the still incomplete Acta Sanctorum which the Bolandist 
Brothers have been preparing for the last four hundred years. 

1 Baring-Gould : Freaks of Fanaticism, p. 15. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 245 

St. Macarius of Alexandria. 

' ' Desirous of serving God with his whole heart, he forsook 
the world in the flower of his age, and spent upwards of 
sixty years in the deserts, in the exercise of fervent penance 
and prayer. . . . For seven years together, St. Macarius 
lived on raw herbs and pulse, and for the three following 
years contented himself with four or five ounces of bread a 
day. His watchings were not less surprising. He told Pal- 
ladius that it had been his great desire to fix his mind on 
God alone for five days and nights continuously. And when 
he supposed he was in the proper mood, he closed his cell 
and stood up and said, * Now thou hast angels and arch- 
angels, and all the heavenly host in company with thee. Be 
in heaven, and forget earthly things. ' And so he continued 
for two nights and days, rapt in heavenly contemplations, 
but then his hut seemed to flame about him, even the mat on 
which he stood, and his mind was diverted to earth. ' But 
it was as well,' said he ; « f or I might have fallen into pride.' 
The reputation of the monastery of Tabenna under St. 
Pachomius, drew him to enter it in disguise. St. Pachomius 
told him he seemed too far advanced in years to begin to 
practice the austerities undergone by himself and his monks ; 
nevertheless, on his earnest entreaty, he admitted him. 
Then Lent drew on, and the aged Macarius saw the monks 
fasting, some two whole days, others five ; some standing all 
night, and sitting at their work during the day. Then he, 
having soaked some palm leaves, as material for his work, 
went apart into a corner, and till Easter came he neither 
ate nor drank, nor sat down, nor bowed his knee, nor lay 
down, and sustained life on a few raw cabbage leaves which 
he ate on Sundays ; and when he went forth for any need 
he returned silently to his work, and occupied his hands in 
platting, and his heart in prayer. But when the others saw 
this, they were astonished, and remonstrated with St. Pacho- 
mius, saying, l Why hast thou brought this fleshless man 
here to confound us with his austerities. Send him away, 
or we will desert this place.' . . . Macarius, on one occa- 
sion, to subdue his flesh, filled two great baskets with sand, 
and laying them on his shoulders, walked over the hot desert, 
bowed beneath them. A friend meeting him offered to ease 
him of his burden, but 4 No, ' said the old hermit, c I have to 
torment my tormentor ; ' meaning his body. 



246 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

One day a gnat stung him in his cell, and he killed it. 
Then, ashamed that he had allowed himself to be irritated 
by the petty insect, and to have lost an opportunity of endur- 
ing mortification with equanimity, he went to the marshes of 
Scete, and stayed there six months, suffering greatly from 
the stings of the insects. When he returned, he was so 
disfigured by their bites, that he. was only recognized by his 
voice." 1 

St. Simeon of Stylites. 

44 He was in the convent about four months, serving all 
without complaint, and in that time he learned the whole 
Psalter by heart. But the food which he took with his 
brethren he gave away secretly to the poor, reserving for 
himself only food for one day in the seven. But one day, 
having gone to the well to draw water, he took the rope from 
the bucket and wound it round his body, from the loins to 
the neck, and wore it till his flesh was cut into by the rope. 
One day, some of the brethren found him giving his food to 
the poor ; and when they returned, they complained to the 
abbot, saying, 'We cannot abstain like him ; he fasts from 
Lord's day to Lord's day, and gives away his food.' Then 
the abbot rebuked him, and Simeon answered not. And the 
abbot being angry, bade strip him, and found the rope round 
him, sunk into the flesh, and with great trouble it was un- 
coiled, and the skin came off with it; then the monks took 
care of him and healed him A horrible stench, in- 
tolerable to the bystanders, exhaled from his body and worms 
dropped from him whenever he moved, and they filled his 
bed. 2 When he was healed, he went out of the monas- 
tery and entered a deserted tank, where there was no water, 
no man knowing. After a few days he was found, and the 
abbot descended into the tank. Then the blessed Simeon, 
seeing him, began to entreat, saying : < I beg you, servants 
of God, let me alone one hour, that I may render up my 
spirit ; for yet a little while and it will fail. But my soul is 
very weary, because I have angered the Lord.' Finally the 
abbot brought him back to the monastery by force. 'After 
this, ' says Theodore t, * he came to the Telanassus, under the 
peak of the mountain, on which he lived till his death, and 

1 January, p. 30. 

2 See Lecky: Hist, of European Morals, Vol. 2, p. 119. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 247 

having found a little house, he remained in it shut up for 
three years. But, eager to advance in virtue, he tried to 
persuade Blasus, who was archpriest of the villages around, 
to leave nothing within by him, for forty days and nights, 
but to close up the door with clay. The priest warned him 
that to die by one's own act is no virtue, but is a great 
crime. « Put by me then, father,' he said, ' ten loaves, and 
a cruse of water, and if I find my body needs sustenance, I 
will partake of them.' Then Blasus did so, and at the end 
of the days Blasus removed the clay, and going in, found the 
bread and water untouched, and Simeon lying, unable to 
speak or move. Getting a sponge, he moistened and opened 
his lips, and then gave him the Holy Eucharist ; and strength- 
ened by this immortal food he chewed, little by little, lettuces 
and succory, and such like. . . . For a whole year 
he stood upon one leg, the other being covered with hideous 
ulcers, while his biographer was commissioned to stand by 
his side, to pick up the worms that fell from his body, and 
to replace them in the sores, the saint saying to the worm, 
' Eat what God has given you.' x 

" The wild Arabs came from their deserts to see the wierd, 
haggard man in his den. He fled from them as they crowded 
upon him, not into the wastes of sand, but up a pillar ; first 
up one six cubits, then one twelve cubits, and finally, one of 
thirty-six. Here he swayed his body in prayer, rapidly 
bending it in two. A spectator attempted to number these 
rapid motions, but desisted from weariness when he had 
counted 1,244. On festivals, from the setting of the sun 
till its appearance again, he stood all night with his hands 
uplifted to heaven, neither soothed with sleep, nor conquered 
by fatigue. He finally died on the pillar. A crowd of pre- 
lates followed him to the grave, a brilliant star is said to 
have shone miraculously over his pillar ; the general voice of 
mankind pronounced him to be the highest model of a Chris- 
tian saint, and several other anchorites imitated or emulated 
his penances." 2 

St. Theodosius. 

. . . "The first lesson St. Theodosius taught his 
monks was, that the continual remembrance of death is the 

1 Lecky: op. cit., p. 119. 

2 Lecky: Hist, of European Morals, 2, p. 119, and Baring-Gould: Lives 
of the Saints, January, p. 73 ff. 



248 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

foundation of religious perfection. To impress the thought 
of death more deeply on their minds, he caused a great sep- 
ulchre to be constructed as the common burying place of his 
monks. When it was complete, half seriously and half in 
jest, he said : * The tomb is finished, which of you will be 
its first inmate ? ' Then one, Basil, a priest, knelt at his 
feet, and asked to be the first to celebrate the dedication of 
the sepulchre. Therefore St. Theodosius ordered all the 
offices of the dead to be recited for Basil, first for three days, 
then for nine, and then for forty; and at the close of the 
forty days he died without sickness or pain, as though going 
to sleep/' 1 

St. Stephen of Grandmoot. 

" In a wild solitude, amidst rocks and trees, 
Stephen passed forty-six years in prayer and the practice of 
such austerities as almost surpassed the strength of a human 
body. He, lived at first on wild herbs and roots. In the 
second summer he was discovered by certain shepherds who 
brought him a little coarse bread, which some country peo- 
ple from that time continued to do as long as he lived. He 
always wore next his skin a hair-cloth with iron plates and 
hoops studded with sharp spikes, over which his only gar- 
ment, made of the coarsest stuff, was the same, both in sum- 
mer and winter. When overcome by sleep, he took a short 
rest on rough boards, laid in the form of a coffin." 2 

The hermits belonging to the Benedictine order lived on 
bread and water four days in the week : on Tuesdays and 
Thursdays they ate pulse and herbs, which every one dressed 
in his own cell : on their fast days all their bread was given 
them by weight. They never used any wine, even though it 
was the common drink of the country, except for mass, or in 
sickness : they went barefoot, used disciplines, made many 
genuflections, struck their breasts, stood with their arms 
stretched out in prayer, each according to his strength and 
devotion. After the night office they said the whole psalter 
before day. 3 

St. Peteb Damiani. 

4 « He lived shut up in his cell as in a prison, 
fasted every day, except festivals, and allowed himself no 

1 January, p. 152. 2 February, p. 226. 8 February, p. 388. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 249 

other subsistence than coarse bread, bran, herbs, and water, 
and this he never drank fresh, bat what he had kept from 
the day before. He tortured his body with iron girdles, and 
frequent disciplines to render it more obedient to the spirit. 
He passed the first three days of every Lent and Advent 
without taking any kind of nourishment whatsoever ; and 
often for forty days together, lived only on raw herbs and 
fruits, or on pulse steeped in cold water, without touching 
so much as bread, or anything that had passed the fire. A 
mat spread on the floor was his bed. ' ' : 

More interesting, perhaps, than any of these is the auto- 
biography of Henry Suso, a German mystic of the 14th 
century, from which Prof. James gives a lengthy extract in 
his Varieties of Religious Experience. 2 In order to oring 
his body into subjection Suso wore for a long time « ' a hair 
shirt and an iron chain, until the blood ran from him, so that 
he was obliged to leave them off. He secretly caused an un- 
dergarment to be made for him ; and in the undergarment 
he had strips of leather fixed, into which a hundred and 
fifty brass nails, pointed, and filed sharp, were driven, and 
the points of the nails were always turned towards the flesh. 
He had this garment made very tight, and so arranged as to 
go around him and fasten in front, in order that it might 
fit the closer to his body, and the pointed nails might be 
driven into his flesh ; and it was high enough to reach up- 
wards to his navel. In this he used to sleep at night. 

. He was so covered with parasitic insects that it 
often seemed to him as if he were lying upon an ant-hill, 
from the torture caused by the insects ; for if he wished to 
sleep, or when he had fallen asleep, they vied with one an- 
other. (It may be mentioned in this connection that St. 
Francis of Assisi held it for an honor and a glory to wear 
these " celestial pearls *■' (lice) in his habit.) Later on Suso 
put his hands into two leathern hoops, and fastened one on 
each side his throat, and made the fastenings so secure that 
even if his cell had been on fire about him, he could not have 
helped himself. Thus he continued until his hands and arms 
had become almost tremulous with the strain, and then he 
devised something else : two leather gloves ; and he caused 
a brazier to fit them all over with sharp-pointed brass tacks, 
and he used to put them on at night, in order that if he 

1 February, p. 391 . 2 Pp. 307-309. 



250 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

should try while asleep to throw off the hair undergarment, 
or relieve himself from the gnawings of the vile insects, the 
tacks might then stick into his body. If ever he sought to 
help himself with his hands in his sleep, he drove the sharp 
tacks into his breast, and tore himself, so that his flesh fes- 
tered. When after many weeks the wounds had healed, he 
tore himself again and made fresh wounds. Later still, to 
emulate the sorrows of his crucified Lord, he made himself a 
cross with thirty protruding iron needles and nails. This he 
bore on his bare back between his shoulders day and night. 
The first time that he stretched out this cross upon his back 
his tender frame was struck with terror at it, and he there- 
fore blunted the sharp nails slightly against a stone. But 
soon, repenting of this womanly cowardice, he pointed them 
all again with a file, and placed once more the cross upon 
him. It made his back, where the bones are, bloody and 
seared. Whenever he sat down or stood up, it was as if a 
hedgehog skin were on him. If any one touched him un- 
awares, or pushed against his clothes, it tore him. 
For twenty-five years he never took a bath, either a water or 
a sweating bath ; and this he did in order to mortify his 
comfort-seeking body. He practiced for a long time such 
rigid povery that he would neither receive nor touch a 
penny, either with leave or without it. For a considerable 
time he strove to attain such a high degree of purity that he 
would neither scratch nor touch any part of his body, save 
only his hands and feet. ' ' 

To quote Mr. Lecky again, " There is, perhaps, no phase 
in the moral history of mankind, of a deeper or more painful 
interest than this ascetic epidemic. A hideous, sordid, and 
emaciated maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, 
without natural affection, passing his life in a long routine 
of useless and atrocious self-torture, and quailing before the 
ghastly phantoms of his delirious brain, had become the ideal 
of the nations which had known the writings of Plato and 
Cicero, and the lives of Socrates and Cato. For about two 
centuries the hideous maceration of the body was regarded 
as the highest proof of excellence." 

5. The fervent love of Christ, the desire to imitate Him, 
especially the sufferings he bore, and to repay Him as far as 
possible for His great sacrifice for humanity is another cause 
of Christian asceticism. It has already been shown that the 
ardent lover yearns to suffer and make sacrifices for the 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 251 

object of his affection. And when that object is a God 
who, on account of His love for sinful man has allowed 
Himself to suffer great insults and crucifixion, these ex- 
tremely emotional individuals find it impossible to offer 
sacrifices great enough to adequately express their love 
and gratitude. "The self-maceration of ascetics," writes 
Baring-Gould, ' ' arises from no other cause ; the Catho- 
lic recluse who imposes austerities upon himself does not 
suffer; he joys in his penances, because they ease his 
soul of its inextinguishable love." 1 Add to this Christ's 
warning : "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, 
and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sis- 
ters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. 
And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, 
cannot be my disciple. For whosoever will save his life shall 
lose it ; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the 
Gospel's, the same shall save it," and we have the cause of 
the very many Greek and Roman Catholic ascetic sects, which 
have persisted from ancient times to the present. 

6. Another cause of asceticism is the belief that the final 
Day of Judgment is near at hand, a belief which has been 
entertained by almost every race, even our American Indi- 
ans, and in every age. The dreams and visions of Daniel 
which pointed to a near dissolution of the iniquitous world, 
and a general resurrection thereafter, produced a profound 
impression upon the Jews, upon John the Baptist, and even 
upon Jesus himself, who undertook to prepare the people for 
the advent of the Kingdom of Heaven, which he expected to 
appear at any moment. This expectation became general and 
continued for centuries. " Persuaded that the Messiah had 
come, writes Sabatier, they (the apostles and the first gener- 
ation of Christians) could not imagine that the world would 
last long. Without a single exception they awaited from day 
to day the triumphant return of their Master upon the clouds 
of heaven. The whole Apocalypse of St. John is built upon 
this hope. Paul was no exception. Almost to the close of 
his career he believed that he should see before death this 
glorious revolution and the resurrection of the dead. Such 
an absorbing vision filled the believers with ardent enthusi- 
asm, detached them from the earth, took away all anxiety 
for the future. They lived in a fever of exaltation. The 

1 Freaks of Fanaticism, Vol. 2, p. 317. 



252 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

necessities of common life, like its laws, seemed to them 
abolished. 1 

In an appendix 2 the same author writes : ' ' No single 
apostle concerned himself with what we call posterity; no 
one wrote a line, prepared a liturgy, founded an institution, 
ecclesiastic or other, for the future. The future was closed 
to them. They believed themselves to be living in the last 
days of the world. A great number of things which surprise 
us in their conduct or their ideas, community of goods, in- 
difference to persecutions and menaces, disdain even of mar- 
riage and other earthly blessings, are intelligible in the light of 
their apocalyptic hopes." And President Hall writes of this 
period : "In this new dualism the Jehnseits was so superior 
to the Biesseits that all the scales of value were reversed, 
and all the troubles, disorders, and ruinations of the period 
impelled the soul to fly to, and live by anticipation in its 
home above. . . It was really the most natural and inevita- 
ble result of a fixed and literal belief in the resurrection and 
all that it implied. The passionate thirst for martyrdom 
made it thought by many the very best gift they could ren- 
der to God and they went far out of their way to provoke it. 
Men rushed to death with a cheer which to the Romans 
seemed a blind fanaticism because they could not understand 
it to be anything but sheer obstinacy that men would refuse 
to cry ' ' Lord Caesar, ' ' or burn a grain of frankincense on 
the altar. ' ' 3 In the second century this belief formed the 
most fundamental tenet of the so-called Montanist heresy. 
4 ' The Montanists claimed that in them the gifts of the 
Spirit had revived; they predicted the near return of the 
Christ, and the last judgment ; they consequently proposed 
to maintain, by a discipline to the last degree rigorous, a 
clean-cut separation and irreconcilable conflict between the 
4 family of the saints, ' and a corrupt world condemned to 
imminent destruction." 4 

A little later, during the decline and fall of the Roman Em- 
pire, the state of affairs — social, political, and moral — was 
so irremediably rotten, the culture so hollow and untrue, 
that earnest and religious men feared the end was near, and 
hastened to obey the call, " Come out of her, my people, that 

1 Sabatier: Religions of Authority, p. 23. 

2 Appendix 10. 

3 Am. Jour, of Religious Psy. and Ed., Vol. 1, p. 43. 
4 Sabatier: loc. cit., p. 35. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 253 

you be not partakers of her sins, that ye receive not of 
her plagues; for her sins have reached unto heaven, and 
God hath remembered her iniquities. " 

The same belief was one of the causes of the reckless 
Crusades, and at the end of every century there have 
been visionaries who were convinced that it would be the 
last, and prepared themselves accordingly. " Where this 
expectation is a living force" writes Harnack, " life, as usu- 
ally lived, can no longer maintain an independent value, 
however conscientiously a man may recognize the calls of 
duty." 

7. Great calamities, such as earthquakes, floods, fires, 
famines, plagues, etc., are the best agents for creating the 
ascetic temperament. 

The Flagellants, or the Brethren of the Cross, as they 
sometimes styled themselves, a pathological religious sect 
born during the terrible Black Death of the 14th century, 
is a case in point. This sect, consisting at first of members 
of the lower classes, but soon augmented by nobles, ecclesi- 
astics, learned men and women, and even children, endeav- 
ored to do penance for the people in the hope of averting 
the plague. The movement began in Hungary and later 
spread all over Europe. Led by prominent men and singers 
bearing tapers and magnificent banners of velvet and cloth 
of gold, they marched in well organized processions, robed 
in sombre garments with red crosses on the breast, back, 
and cap; their heads covered as far as the eyes, their looks 
fixed on the ground, and presenting a very sad and mourn- 
ful spectacle. 1 SchafP gives the following description of 
their processions and actions : ' ' When they came to 
towns, the bands marched in regular military order and sing- 
ing hymns. At the time of the flagellation they selected a 
square, or churchyard or field. Taking off their shoes and 
stockings, and forming a circle, they girded themselves with 
aprons and laid down flat on the ground .... The leader then 
stepped over each one, touched them with a whip, and bade 
them rise. As each was touched they followed their leader 
and imitated him. Once all on their feet the flagellation 
began. The brethren went two by two around the whole 
circle, striking their backs till the blood trickled down from 
the wounds. The whip consisted of three thongs each with 

1 See Hecker: Epidemics of the Middle Ages, pp. 34 ff. 



254 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

four iron teeth. During the flagellations a hymn was sung. 
After all had gone around the circle, the whole body again 
fell to the ground, beating upon their breasts. On arising 
they flagellated themselves a second time. l 

Even now, there are some who consider a national calamity 
a visitation from God, who has been angered, and needs 
therefore to be appeased. Again, the many ascetic sects of 
Russia, counting thirteen millions, mostly peasants, owe 
their birth to their poverty and wretchedness, and to the 
tyrannical oppressions and persecutions of the government. 
When adversity of any kind overwhelms him, man either 
curses God and spitefully throws all rules and morals to the 
wind, or he hastens to Him, and with shaved head and in 
sackcloth and ashes, falls upon the ground and supplicates 
His mercy. Poor worm of the dust ! when we remember 
his utter helplessness against the forces of nature, and his 
profound ignorance of their modi operandi, we cannot but 
sympathize with the frantic and irrational means he takes to 
insure himself against them. 

8 Lastly there have been in every land and age a 
large number of individuals of a passive temperament who 
have become ascetics because such a life was most natural and 
comfortable for them ; — in it is their line of least resistance. 
They cannot possibly adapt themselves to the ordinary hum- 
drum of active life, with its various pleasures and pains for 
which they have no taste, and are willing to purchase at 
the cost of great privations, solitude and silence, in which 
they can satisfy their contemplative tendencies undisturbed, 
and develop their mental and spiritual faculties at the 
expense of their physical and social instincts and desires. 
Ascetics of this type are most numerous in the Orient, where 
the love of tranquility and meditation is very pronounced, 
but they are not wanting in the West. However, they are 
more philosophical than the ordinary religious ascetics. 

Such in brief are the varieties of genuine ascetics. What 
can our estimate of them be, other than that with a few nota- 
ble exceptions they were all extremely egoistical and anti- 
social, in that they were concerned only with their own well 
being and salvation, and spared not a thought for their 
fellow men, not even for their nearest kith and kin ; men of 
passive and pessimistic temperaments, out of harmony with 

1 Religious Encyclopedia, article, Flagellants. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 255 

their environment, possessed of one all-engrossing idea, deni- 
zens of another world ; in a single word, morbid. The world 
is surely no better for their having lived or rather existed, 
for there is nothing in their lives which we can admire to- 
day, not even their virtue ; for they were virtuous because 
they fled the world and its temptations, and not because they 
remained in it and overcame them. 

" I cannot praise, " said Milton, " a fugitive and cloistered 
virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and 
sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that 
immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. 
Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world ; we bring 
impurity much rather ; that which purifies us is trial, and 
trial is by what is contrary. That virtue, therefore, which 
is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows 
not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and 
rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure. ' ' 

We have called these genuine ascetics because however 
bizarre their actions, however gloomy and morbid their 
views and beliefs, however unnatural and abnormal their 
lives, they were at least sincere and serious in all they did 
and believed, and for that reason, if for no other, they com- 
manded respect and admiration from their contemporaries. 
But when ascetism became fashionable, so to speak, when 
a halo of glory and sanctity encircled it ; monasticism was 
born, and hosts of individuals in whom the passion was 
not deep-seated, who were i ' without the inward strength 
for the life, and without the deep spiritual impulse, ' ' but 
who found in the monasteries an opportunity to lead a life 
of ease and inactivity, nocked to them, with the result that 
soon the whole life became degraded. Pride, mental dis- 
orders, insanity, self -mutilations, often to the extent of sui- 
cide resulted ; and sometimes violent reaction to unbridled 
licentiousness. " Thousands had gone out," writes Har- 
nack, « ' and the reputation of sanctity, dissatisfaction with 
the world, or dislike of work, enticed thousands after them. 
Of inducements to a monastic life there were many, espe- 
cially since the establishment of a State Church, when a real 
or affected enthusiasm no longer led to martyrdom. " 

Gibbon states that the monasteries were filled by a crowd 
of obscure and abject plebeians, who gained in the cloister 
much more than they had sacrificed in the world. Peasants, 
slaves, and mechanics might escape from poverty and con- 



256 Pathological Aspects of Religions, 

tempt to a safe and honorable profession, where apparent 
hardships were mitigated by custom, by popular applause, 
and by the secret relaxation of discipline." Further, he 
writes : " The subjects of Rome, whose persons and fortunes 
were made responsible for unequal and exorbitant tributes, 
retired from the oppression of the imperial government ; 
and the pusillanimous youth preferred the penance of a 
monastic to the dangers of a military life. The affrighted 
provincials of every rank, who tied before the barbarians, 
found shelter and subsistence ; whole legions were buried in 
these religious sanctuaries ; and the same cause which re- 
lieved the distress of individuals, impaired the strength and 
fortitude of the empire. ; ' 1 

Likewise, Jerome bewailed the fact that individuals of the 
lowest classes became monks because they found the life 
easy and comfortable, and could use it as a convenient cloak 
to hide their vices and crimes. Many became wandering 
beggars and quacks selling sham relics to the credulous, and 
playing on the tender feelings of the sympathetic, somewhat 
as professional tramps do to-day. 

That the conditions were not improved in later times is 
evident from the many burlesques on the monks, the fre- 
quent protest of earnest spirits, and the rigid rules drawn 
up to regulate and fetter their lascivious lives. A letter 
from Erasmus to an English bishop is interesting in this 
connection. < ' The monastic profession, ' ' he writes, ' ' may be 
honorable in itself. Genuine monks we can respect; but 
where are they ? What monastic character have those we see 
except the dress and the tonsure ? It would be wrong to say 
that there are no exceptions ; but I beseech you — you who 
are a good pure man — go round the religious houses in your 
own diocese ; how much will you find of Christian piety ? 
The mendicant orders are the worst — they are hated, and 
they know why ; but they will not mend their lives, and 
think to bear down opposition with insolence and force. 
Augustine says that there are nowhere better men than in 
the monasteries, and nowhere worse. What would he say 
now, if he saw so many of these houses both of men and 
women little better than brothels ? I speak of these places 
as they exist now among ourselves — Immortal Gods ! how 



1 Decline and Fall, Vol. 6. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 257 

small is the number where you will find Christianity of any 
kind?" 1 

It was unavoidable that the monasteries, harboring so 
many individuals of loose characters, living an institutional 
life, which is itself favorable for the development of men- 
tal disorders of various kinds, in enforced celibacy, and 
ofttimes in idleness, should become hotbeds of vice and 
corruption. 

St. Theresa vigorously denounced the life she had seen in 
the unreformed convents, declaring it to be a " short cut to 
hell!" "Bather let fathers," she advised, "marry their 
daughters basely, than allow them to face dangers of ten 
worlds rolled into one where youth, sensuality and the devil 
invite and incline them to follow things worldly and of the 
worldly." 2 

The very term « Muliers Subintroductae ' is suggestive of 
the immoral conditions existing in the monasteries. In the 
time of St. Cyprian, and even much later, monks kept their 
mistresses, under various pretexts, in their houses. " Noble 
ladies, pretending a desire to live a life of continence, aban- 
doned their husbands to live with low-born lovers. Palestine, 
which soon became the centre of pilgrimages, had become, in 
the time of St. Gregory of Nyssa, a hotbed of debauchery. 
. The luxury and ambition of the higher prelates, 
and the passion for amusements of the inferior priests, were 
bitterly acknowledged. St. Jerome complained that the 
banquets of the many bishops eclipsed in splendor those of 
the provincial governors, and the intrigues by which they ob- 
tained offices, and the fierce partisanship of their supporters, 
appear in every page of ecclesiastical history." 3 

Fanaticism, cruel intolerance, party hatred and violence, 
narrow bigotry, and even bloody persecution of those who 
opposed them, these terrible and unchristian vices were seen 
among monks, even in very early times, and stain the records 
of Monasticism in its palmiest days. Of the evil effect on 
the mental health of the inmates, Lecky writes: "A melan- 
choly, leading to desperation, known to theologians under 
the name of ' acedia ,' was not uncommon in monasteries. 
The frequent suicides of monks, sometimes to escape the 
world, sometimes through despair at their inability to quell 

1 Woodhouse: The Military Religious Orders of the Middle Ages, pp. 
240-241. 

2 Woodhouse: op. cit., p. 238. 

s Lecky: Hist, of European Morals, 2, p. 162. 

17 



258 Pathological Aspects of Religions, 

the propensities of the body, sometimes through insanity pro- 
duced by their mode of life, and by their dread of surround- 
ing demons were noticed by the early Church. ' ' Combining 
incidents from the lives of St. Jerome, St. Mary of Egypt, 
and St. Hilarion, the same author writes a very eloquent de- 
scription of their unhappy cell experiences. "In the ghastly 
gloom of the sepulchre, where, amid mouldering corpses, he 
took up his abode ; in the long hours of the night of penance, 
when the desert wind sobbed around his lonely cell, and the 
cries of the wild beasts were borne upon his ear, visible 
forms of lust or terror appeared to haunt him, and strange 
dreams were enacted by those who were contending for his 
soul. An imagination strained to the utmost limit, acting 
upon a frame attenuated and diseased by macerations, pro- 
duced bewildering psychological phenomena, paroxysms of 
conflicting passions, sudden alternations of joy and anguish, 
which he regarded as manifestly supernatural. Sometimes 
in the very ecstasy of his devotion, the memory of old scenes 
would crowd upon his mind. The shady groves and soft 
voluptuous gardens of his native city would arise, and, kneel- 
ing alone upon the burning sand, he seemed to see around 
him the fair groups of dancing girls, on whose warm, undu- 
lating limbs and wanton smiles his youthful eyes had too 
fondly dwelt. Sometimes his temptation sprang from re- 
membered sounds. The sweet, licentious songs of other 
days came floating on his ear, and his heart was thrilled with 
the passions of the past. And then the scene would change. 
As his lips were murmuring the psalter, his imagination, 
fired perhaps by the music of some martial psalm, depicted 
the crowded amphitheatre. The throng, and passion, and 
mingled cries of eager thousands were present to his mind, 
and the fierce joy of the gladiators passed through the tumult 
of his dreams." 2 

The many anecdotes of the severe struggles of saints, to 
say nothing of the masses of obscure monks, against their 
eroticism which was either induced or aggravated by their 
mode of life, and by their vow of chastity, which meant not 
moral chastity, but the total suppression of their sexual in- 
stincts, are pitiable in the extreme. But they belong more 
properly to the section on Love. 

Let it be understood that a wholesale condemnation is not 

2 Op. cit., pp. 124-125. 



The Volitional Element in Religion. 259 

here made against monasticism. The impulses which gave 
birth to it, like those of asceticism are deep-lying and funda- 
mental in a large class of normal individuals. When prop- 
erly controlled the ascetic tendency works for righteousness 
and healthy-mindedness, and we may even go so far as to 
say that without a certain amount of self-renunciation and 
self-sacrifice, moral excellence is impossible. The greatest 
characters in history have all been more or less ascetics, and 
within the Christian Church such names as Augustine, 
Thomas Aquinas, Savanarola, Anselm, Abelard, Erigena, 
Roscelin, Duns Scotus, Albertus Magnus, and a host of 
others are a lasting honor and glory to the system which 
fostered them, if it did not actually give them birth. It was 
the monks who fanned the dying embers of civilization 
during the Dark Ages, who converted the hordes of wild 
barbarians and taught them to be gentle, who gave a lasting 
impetus to literature, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, 
and agriculture, and who dignified labor and made it honor- 
able. Surely the civilized world is indebted to monasticism 
to an extent which it hardly realizes. 

It is not with such monasticism, however, that we have 
here been concerned, but with that form of it which militated 
against the welfare of civilization and the race, which looked 
with bitter scorn and contempt upon that most sacred insti- 
tution of all, namely marriage, and embittered the sweet 
relations of domestic life ; which took men out of the world, 
away from their homes and families, and preached to them 
a gospel fit only for maniacs and the most abject slaves; 
which made of its disciples "a race of filthy animals," to 
use Gibbon's phrase, and which bred mental, moral, and 
physical disease. 

Surely no one will deny that such monasticism is, to say 
the least, pathological and irreligious, as we now under- 
stand the term. 

With this our study of the pathological aspects of religions 
ends. It were absurd to entertain the belief that it is com- 
plete, flawless and wholly satisfactory, but as a tentative 
attempt in a new and undeveloped field it may not be with- 
out some value and suggestiveness to some future worker. 

We shall not burden the reader with a lengthy epilogue, 
or resume, or even further generalizations and conclusions. 
If the central idea of the book and the lesson it teaches is 
not already clear, then our labor has been in vain and a few 



260 Pathological Aspects of Religions. 

more pages will hardly make it less so. We cannot close, 
however, without reminding the reader again that we have 
wandered through religious deserts, swamps, and marshes, 
through the wards of religious hospitals, and insane asylums, 
so to speak, where we saw the varieties of religious diseases. 
Our task did not take us out into the busy world, into happy 
homes and beautiful houses of worship where the uplifting 
influence of normal religion is abundantly in evidence. We 
have catalogued and studied the poisonous weeds ; the many 
beautiful and fragrant flowers and fruits need no searching 
out. 



INDEX 



Abbot, definition of insanity, 14 
Achelis, quoted, 228-229 

Albath, 163 

Alexander, Rev., quoted, 57 

d'Alviella, on religion, 7 

— on symbols, 132 
Anaesthetics, Church leaders 

opposed to use of, 185 

Angels, Swedenborg's descrip- 
tion of, 108, III 
Anger, an element in relig- 
ious experience, 33 
Animal worship, 30 
Apathy, religious, 207-212 
Asceticism, 233 

— normal and abnormal, 235-238 

— origins of, 238-260 
Attis and Cybele, festival of, 30-31 
Awakening, The Great, 47-50 

Baptismal rites, 138 

Barclay, on the Talmud, 154 

Baring-Gould, on love and 

religion, 18 

— on mysticism, 71, 76 

— on asceticism, 236 

— extracts from his " laves 

of the Saints," 244-249 

Beliefs concerning disease, 177 
Belief defined, 175 

— normal and abnormal be- 

liefs differentiated, 176 
Biart, quoted, 64 
Bibliolatry, I4iff 
Binney, quoted, 210 
Black Death and other 
plagues and pesti- 
lences, 186-7 
Boehme, Jacob, 101-103 
Bonchitte, on mysticism, 69 
Bossuet, quoted, 220 
Boston Post-Boy, on revival 

methods, 49 

Bradley, on religion, 8 

Brahmanism, 74-76 

Brinton, on religion, 5, 6 

— on racial insanity, 14 

— on love and religion, 18 

— on mysticism, 73-74 

— quoted, 230 
Browning, 117-119 



Buddhism, a religion or phi- 
losophy? 175 
Burnham, quoted, 194 
Bustami, a Persian Sufi, 77 

Caird, on religion, 11 

Calvin, quoted, 214 

— sketch of his life, 222-226 
Carlyle, on symbolism, 139 

— on doubt, 197-199 

— on work, 204 

— on religious institutions, 233 
Castration, 30-32 
Chauncy, on revivals, 49 
Christian exegesis, 170-173 
Christian Science, its fore- 
runners and followers, 

188-192 
Christs The, a Russian mysti- 
cal sect, 16, 29 
Church organizations, 226-233 
Clifford, on belief, 208 
Clouston, on revivals, 48 
Constant, on phallicism, 24 
Conversion of Children, 56-58 
Conversion, synchronous 

with development of 
sexual life, 20 

Conway, quoted, 138 

Cook, description of phallic 

rites, 25 

Councils against use of medi- 
cines and Jewish physi- 
cians, 180, 183, 184 
Cousin, on mysticism, 70 
Criterion for determining what 
religions are pathologi- 
cal, 13 

Davenport, an account of his 

preaching, 49 

Definitions of religion, 5-12, 175 
Definitions of religion, Criti- 
cism of, 8-9, 174 
Dionysius, 83-84 
Doubt, 193 

— normal and abnormal 

doubt differentiated, 194-207 

Eckart, Meister, 85-88 

Edwards, Jonathan, his ser- 
mons, 34 



262 



Index. 



Ellis, Havelock, on love and 

religion, 18 

Emerson, quoted, 77 

— his mysticism, 122-123 
Emotions cannot entirely ac- 
count for religion, 174 

Empedocles, on religion, 5 

Erasmus on the monastic 

profession, 256 

Ewald, on mysticism, 70 

Fanaticism, 215 

Farrar, quoted, 170 

Fear, an element in religious 

experience, 42-47 

— morbid fears, 45-46 
Feuerbach, on religion, 5, 8 
Fielding, account of his early 

religious training 
quoted, 205-6 

— on belief and conduct, 213 
Flagellants, described, 253-4 
Fox, George, 116-117 

Gematria, 161 

Gibbon, quoted, 256-7 

Goethe, on religion, 7 

— on mysticism, 70 
Grand Man, Swedenborg's 

description of, 109 

Guyau, on religion, 6 

Guyon, Mme., quoted, 16 

Hall, on religion and sex, 20 

— parallelisms between love 

and religion, 20-22 

— on pity, 39-40 

— on fear, 43-44 

— quoted, 209, 252 
Hammond, Rev., quoted, 57 
Harnack, on mysticism, 70 

— quoted, 255 
Hate, an element in religious 

experience, 33 
Heaven, Swedenborg's des- 
cription of, 108 
Hegel, on religion, 7 
Hell, Swedenborg's descrip- 
tion of, 113 
Herbart, on religion, 7 
Herodotus, on phallicism, 26 
Hershon, on the Talmud, I44ff 
Hetarism, 32 
Hierotheus, 82-83 
Hilton, Walter, 115 
Hobbes, on religion, 6 
Huxley, on belief, 208 



Inoculation, opposition of 
Church leaders towards 
it, 185 

Intellect, its r61e in religion, 175 
Interpretation, 141ft 

Jains, 41-42 

James, Wm., on religion, 11 

— on St. Teresa, 16 

— on ritual worship, 138 

— on belief, 176, 202 

— on fanaticism, 216-217, 221 

— on individual and institu- 

tional religion, 227-228 

— on Henry Suso, 249-250 
Jennings, on love and re- 
ligion, 18 

Jews as physicians, decrees 
of popes and councils 
against them, 183 

Judophobia, 183 

Juliana of Norwich, 115 

Jumpers, 55 

Kant, Critique of Pure Reas- 
on, 176 
Kauchiluas The, their phal- 
lic rites, 29 
Kentucky Revival, 51-54 
Kidd, on rational religion, 175 
Kingsley, quoted, 126 
Knight, R. P., quoted, 135 
Krafft-Ebing, on religion and 

sex, 19 

Kropatkin, quoted, 40 

Liateau, Louise, a case of stig- 

matization, 41 

Lecky, quoted, 27, 35, 242-243, 
246-247, 250, 257-258 

Lefevre, Andre\ quoted, 131 

Letourneau, on masculine 

hetarism, 32 

Leuba, definitions of religion 

classified, 7-8 

— quoted, 195, 196, 209, 210-212 
Lord, The, Swedenborg's de- 
scription of, no 

Love, an element in religious 

experience, 15 

Lucretius, on religion, 6 

Luther, on predestination, 37 

— on the writings of St. 

James, 174 

— on diseases, 184 



Inge, on mysticism, 



70, 84 



Mackay, quoted, 
Magic Christian, 
Magnus, Albertus, 



133 

182 

84-85 



Index. 



263 



Mahtnud, quoted, 80 

Marie de l'lncarnation, her 

mystic experiences, 17 

Marshall, on religion, 8 

Martineau, on religion, 7 

Mill, on mysticism, 69 

Milton, quoted, 255 

Mishna, described, 141-142 

Monasticism, 233, 255-259 

Mooney, James, quoted, 125 

Mujerados, 31 

Murisier, quoted, 218-219, 222,232 
Mysticism, 69-129 

— definitions of 69-70 

— protestant mysticism, 98ft 

— among primitive peoples, 

123-125 

— mysticism analyzed, 125-129 
Mystics, criticised, 71-72 

Nietzsche, on pity, 39 

Noack, on mysticism, 70 

Nordau, on mysticism, 69 

Normality, criterion of 177 

Notrikon, 165-167 

Oldenfield, quoted, 58 

Ordures, use of, 182 

Other-worldists, four types 

of, 234-5 

Paracelsus, 100 

Parkman, quoted, 17 

Parsons, quoted, 50 

Pathological religion defined, 12 
Peccatiphobia, 240 

Pfleiderer, on religion, 10 

— on mysticism, 70 
Phallicism, 22-30 
Philo, 81 
Pity, an element in religious 

experience, 38-42 

Plotinus, 81-82 

Praising wheels, 136-137 
Prayers, a remedy for disease, 179 

Prelibation, 29 

Prescott, quoted, 63-64 

Priapus, votaries of, 28 



Qabala, The, 
Quietists, 



160-170 
98 



Rabia, a Sufi saint, 77 

Reason, only one of the ele- 
ments of religion, 174 
R£c£jac, on mysticism, 70 
Relics, I3 2 -I35» 179 
Religious suicides, 38 



Religious thieves, 38 

Renan, quoted, 201 

— on Calvin, 222-226 
Renunciation, 30 
Repetitions in prayers, 137-138 
Ritchie, on religion, 10 
Ritual worship, 138 
Romanes, on religion, 7 
Royal touch for diseases, 185 
Royce, on doubt, 200-201 
Rumi Jalaluddin, a Sufi poet, 

77-78 

Russian Church, 140 

Russian Sects, 211 

Ruysbroeck, quoted, 16 

— his mysticism, 91 

Sabatier, on asceticism, 251-252 

— on religion, 8 
Sacred wells and springs, 182 

— shrines, 182, 185 
Sacrifices, human, 59-65 
Said, quoted, 79 
Saints against the use of med- 
icines and Jewish physi- 
cians, 178-183 

Schaff, quoted , 253 

Schleiermacher, on religion, 7 
Schroeder van den Kalk, on 

religion and sex, 19 

Schwenkfeld, 103 

Scientism, 207-9 

Sergi, on religion, 5 

Seth, on mysticism, 70 

Sex, relationship to religion, 15-33 
Shakers, 55 

Shelley, on religion, 6 

Signatures, doctrine of, 181 

Silesius, quoted, 126 

Simpson, Wm., quoted, 137 

Skoptsy, a Russian sect, 16, 32 
Spitzka, on religion and sex, 19 
Starbuck, quoted, 194-5 

Strabo, on phallicism, 27 

St. Augustine, on Roman li- 
centiousness, 27 
St. Gertrude, her mystic ex- 
periences, 16-17 
St. Jerome, quoted, 34-35 
St. John of the Cross, 97-98 

— extract from his manual, 

240-241 
St. Macarius of Alexandria, 245 
St. Paul, his mysticism, 80 

— on the law of righteous- 

ness, 174 

St. Peter Damiani, 248-249 

St. Rosalia, relics of, 179 






/ 



^ 



'J 



264 



Index. 



St. Simeon Stylites, pictured 



243 
246-7 

248 
247-8 
92-97 

257 
76-80 



by Lecky, 

— by Baring-Gould, 
St. Stephen of Grandmont, 
St. Theodosius, 
St. Theresa, 

— quoted, 
Sufism, 
Suso, James's extract from his 

autobiography, quoted, 

249-250 
Swedenborg, 105-114 

Swedenborgianism criticised, 

114-115 
Symbolism, 130-134 

Symbols, 132 

Talmud, extracts from, 142-160 
Tauler, 89-90 

Temurah, 162 

Tennyson 119-121, 202 

Thugism, 36-37 

Tolstoi, on religion, 11, 210-211 



Tracy, quoted, 50 

Tulloch, quoted, 226, 232 

Tyler, quoted < 64 

Upton, on religion, 8 

Vaccination, Church leaders 

opposed to, 185-6 

Vaughan, on mysticism, 69, 73, 76 
Voltaire, on phallicism, 25 

Von Hartmann, on mysticism, 70 

Weigel, 103-104 

Wellwood, quoted, 34 

White, A. D., Warfare of Sci- 
ence with Theology, 178, 134 
White, quoted, 114 

Wier, on religion and sex, 20 

Will, an element in the re- 
ligious experience, 213 
Woodhouse, quoted, 257 
Wordsworth, 121 



76 



Yogins, 



